I'm looking at 3TB USB drives from Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba. It's for backing up a Raid1 configuration. These products all advertise that they are compatible with Windows or Mac OS. What are the steps to re-format and mount for Centos ?

just plug it in !!!
it will auto mount


now
you might want to REMOVE the Microsoft software that is PREINSTALLED
and you might want to reformat the drive to ext3 or 4 ( depending on the version of RHEL )
and use GPT and NOT a dos table
or
make three 1TB partitions

I would use a current "Gparted live CD" and reformat the drive with that

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Hello and welcome to LQ.

Assumes the user has permissions. One may have to add in a user or switch to a user that does have permission to use and access the drive besides permission to format.

Assumes current versions able to use device that size too. If we knew the version and bit length might be better.

RedHat did go to a lot of trouble making great documentation for their distro. The best place is their documentation. I'm having trouble right now but the web site ought to be back up soon. Use web search for terms and seek redhat and centos domains as starting points.

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Thank you both. I see that CentOS 6.4 is recognizing the new disk as follows:

Disk /dev/sdb: 3000.6 GB, 3000558944256 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 45599 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 4096 = 65802240 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00028375

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 45600 2930232320 7 HPFS/NTFS

I'm going to reformat with ext4 & update this thread when done.

CentOS 6.4 ???
upgrade ASAP!!!!!!
6.4 is OUT OF DATE!!!!
it was LAST updated in Dec. 2013

it is MISSING almost a full YEARS OF SECURITY UPDATES

-- do not use !!! --


please upgrade to 6.6 ASAP

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This is an old system that i'm testing with on closed network. The new system will run Centos 7.

I noticed that after rebooting with the USB drive attached, it gets assigned as disk /dev/sda instead of /dev/sdb as indicated above when I had plugged in the drive after power up. So for now the drive is mounted as follows.

1. # mkdir /u01
2. # vi /etc/fstab
3. Append the following to the file:
/dev/sda1 /u01 ext4 defaults 0 0
4. # reboot

I probably won't continue to use the /etc/fstab to auto mount because the intent of the USB drive is to backup Raid1 disks that are going in the new system. I think the procedure will be something like:

1. # mkdir backup_drive
2. Connect the USB drive
3. # fdisk -l
4. Get the assigned USB disk name, for example /dev/sdb1
5. # mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb1 /backup_drive
6. Backup files from the Raid1
7. # umount /backup_drive
8. Unplug the USB disk.

Thanks again for the help.

cent6 and cent 7
mount drives and usb VERY DIFFERENTLY
VERY DIFFERENTLY !!!
what works on 6 WILL NOT work on 7

it is a systemV VS systemD issue

you can NOT use cent 6 to test things out for cent7 !!!!!

Think of it as using Windows XP sp2
to TEST code for Windows7 !!!
-- it will not work --

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If you do not want to get it automounted on boot, add "noauto" option to fstab.
To prevent mess (sda or sdb or sdwhateverelse) mount it by UUID or by LABEL or by PARTUUID
here the sample from my fstab:
When I have to deal with this partition I just run
If you have no label assosiated to your drive, you can set it by e2label