Add a Hard Drive

1) run fdisk to create the partition structure on hda
2) assign mount point(s)
3) edit fstab to mount at boot if wanted.

or, if already existing partion,
run mount to mount it.
define the mount point first naturally.

existing partiton is most likely fat32 or ntfs

swap the channels to the cdrom and hard drive.
seems you have the cdrom in channel0 and hard drive in 1
( primary = 0 secondary =1 )

that is why fdisk is going after the cdrom.

or, type fdisk hdc

no, this will not autmatically remove partitions.
try typing fdisk --help to get full fdisk options in usage.
yes the -- is needed if you use the help.
single - with just h will do same thing, display the help screen.

moount is the system tool to be able to access hard drives, cdroms, dvdroms, or floppy drives.
if there is a disk in and you don't mount the device, then it won't be accessable.

maybe it's been named umount or umount2 ( I've seen both used )
you have to explicitly tell linux fdisk to do something, same as with microsoft's version.

Hi,
linux refers to devices according to the way they are installed. Primary Master is /dev/hda, Primary Slave is /dev/hdb and Secondary MAster is /dev/hdc. Secondary IDE channel slave is referred to as /dev/hdd

A cd rom can be known as either /dev/cdrom or the drive place in the connection schema above.

You use the command fdisk to partition the drive. "cfdisk" is more user fiorendly if installed. Alternatively, you can use a commercial tool such as Partition Magic. There are many others but cfdisk is quite easy. ALso look at bootitng to manage partitions. Do NOT install it - use it in maintenance mode.

Once you have created a partition, you need to create a "mount point" on your directory tree.

Assume you wish to use this drive to replace your existing /home directory to store user files.

I will assume for example that the drive is /dev/hdc.

Back up your existing /home and test it.
After partitioning, use the mke2fs command to format the drive. If it is /dev/hdc1 the command is mke2fs /dev/hdc1

Then you can copy the existing /home to the partition using the command
dd if=/home of=/dev/hdc1

Verify that the copy was successful

Use the mv command to rename /home as /oldhome
Create a new directory /home
Issue the command mount /dev/hdc1 /home

Run the command mtab and you will see the line that refers to /home and /dev/hdc1

Copy that line to the file /etc/fstab

IF all is well, you can after a prudent amount of time, delete the /oldhome directory freeing up the space.

I hope that has been helpful

In my experience, THIS WILL NOT WORK.

I tried to do something like this not long ago and found the if you put an IDE drive in your system, the system will try to boot to that INSTEAD of the SCSI drive.

There was not an option in the BIOS to select the SCSI drive before the IDE.

I had a three SCSI drives, and wanted to throw one big IDE drive in for a quick ADDITIONAL backup. We have some users that pooch files quite often, and would have been much quicker to retrieve from an internal hard drive than to search the tape backups. This was going to be in addition to the tape. Didn't work so.

I've read the previous answers. If I didn't know the answer already those answers wouldn't help much. I looked around the Internet to see if there was a good procedure. I couldn't find one. Maybe this will help.

First you have to understand how the disks are named in Linux. The master disk on the first IDE controller is /dev/hda. The slave disk on the first IDE controller is /dev/hdb. The first SCSI disk is /dev/sda. The second SCSI controller is /dev/sdb. And so on.

When you originally installed Linux you should have had the CDROM as the master on the first IDE controller. That would make it /dev/hda. If you do $ls -l /dev/cdrom it probably points to /dev/hda. Now you want to install another IDE disk. You should install it as the master on the second IDE controller. That will probably make it accessible through /dev/hdb or /dev/hdc.

Once you have the cables and jumpers on the new disk set up then boot Linux. There are numerous utilities to show you what hardware is in your system but we'll use trial and error because it is simple and fast.

Log in as root. Start a terminal window such as xterm or gnome-terminal. Check to see if there is a program called /sbin/cfdisk. If that exists then run it. If /sbin/cfdisk doesn't exist then run /sbin/fdisk. Either way you want to pass one of the disk paths to the program as follows:

# /sbin/cfdisk /dev/hda

If you passed the path to the CDROM the program will fail saying that it cannot access the disk. In that case try another device path. If no device paths work then Linux cannot 'see' your new disk. Check the master/slave jumper. Check the data cable connector to see if it is inverted.

Once you have the right device path then cfdisk or fdisk will show you their opening screens. cfdisk is graphical. fdisk is like MS-DOS FDISK. It is command line. Press m and press enter to get a list of commands.

That should get you started. It seems that I've used up my 2000 character limit. I will add a comment for mo

I don't completely understand your response to Answer 5. This is what I think you said.
The new hard disk already has a VFAT file system.
Someone told you that you have to have a VFAT file system.
When you try to mount the partition the mount command says that the mount point does not exist.

If I understand you then it seems like all that you have to do is to create a mount point for the disk/partition and make sure that the mount command understands that the partition is formatted as VFAT.

First, you do NOT have to use VFAT. If the disk already has a formatted VFAT partition that you want to preserve that's fine.

Let's keep the idea that you want to mount the new partition at /mnt/newdisk in the Unix file system. Make sure that the /mnt/newdisk directory exists and is empty. You didn't mention about how Debian "sees" the disk. I will continue as in Answer 5 to refer to this new disk/partition as /dev/hdb1. Then enter the following command. Adjust your actual command accordingly.

mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1 /mnt/newdisk
df

That should do it. Now if the df command shows that a file system exists at /mnt/newdisk then just edit the /etc/fstab file accordingly.

Let me know how it works out. I will be happy to provide more assistance if required. If this doesn't work then when you comment on this answer let me know what messages Debian gives you to make you believe that it sees the new hard disk. Also, you can still use /sbin/cfdisk or /sbin/fdisk to verify that the new disk already has a VFAT file system on a partition. I recommend that you do that. Good luck.