gymnart

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I presently have SuSE 10 installed and I'm very happy with it and want to keep it.
I just had a brand new hard drive (SATA) installed and it does not have a file system on it yet. It is detected when I do: "hwinfo --disk" as: SysFS ID: /block/sda device file: /dev/sda.

So, How do I make this usable? I want to use it as storage and keep my SuSE system.
I'm sorry if this has been answered but I did search and while there was a lot of results, none of them had to do with what I wanted.

pljvaldez

Most people use a graphical tool like GParted to partition and format the drive. Depending on what you want to put on the drive, some file system types are optimized for large files (> 2GB) or for large numbers of small files.

P.S. When using any partitioning tool always double check that you're not going to format your existing drive. Although you can sometimes recover, it's easiest if you don't screw it up the first time. Trust me, I know from experience.

gymnart

THAT's what I'm scared of!! I'm not sure how it works or anything. I've never used it.

My husband and I were poking around and found a partitioner (called, Partitioner) but I was not sure about it so I had him cancel it. Also, it said that some kind of package was not installed and there are no repositories around for SuSE 10.0 in order to install whatever that package was. I don't know if that package was needed or not.
(I'm using KDE 3.5.6)

pljvaldez

I typically use the GParted Live CD to do this. But since it's a secondary drive, you should be able to use GParted from within Suse.

Here's a nice howto with screenshots and stuff. Basically, your used drive should show up with a bunch of colors showing files are being used. The new drive should be blank. You change drives in the upper right hand corner drop down box.

If you're really nervous, you can open your computer case, unplug your good drive, boot the GParted Live CD, and then format the new drive. Then you won't be able to accidentally mess up your main drive. Then shutdown and plug the main drive back in. Suse should find the new formatted drive.

gymnart

Thanks much for your advice!
My husband and I got it working nicely! We used SuSE's Partition tool and it worked within moments. Next I discovered that I could not write to it yet. So, after comparing how my /home directory was set up, I found that I had to be root and make a new folder within that newly mounted drive (I was able to use KDE in super user mode to do this) and set the permissions to myself as owner and put the folder in the users group. Once I did that, I was able to transfer files [as myself] and I played my movies right from there to make sure that everything was ok. Now for the big process of moving all my stuff and organizing it into newly created folders!

gymnart

I have another question:
When I was using the Partition tool, I was asked what mount point I wanted. There were 4 choices (I only remember 3 of them):

"home"
"tmp"
"local"
and I think maybe "var", but I'm not sure

My question is: since I already use a /home and there are already /tmp and /var used for my system, what would have happened if I chose to use one of those as a mount point for my drive? (I chose the one that I recognized as not being used by my system).

I was not given an option to write one in.

i92guboj

This silly wizards like to do assumptions like that you probably wanted to use that drive for a system mount point, which is not the case.

You can mount the drive virtually in any place you want. Usual locations for regular storage are under /mnt/ and /media/, so you could just create a directory under any of these and use it as a mount point for your new drive.

What would happen if you use that drive mounted under /home (or any other of the already existing dirs)? Well, you wouldn't be able to access the contents under that directory until you umount the drive that's mounted on it. Not a good thing (tm).

gymnart

I agree that does not sound so good. But it is reverseable then? That's good.

Since the drive is already mounted, would I be able to unmount it and then remount it in a subdirectory in /mnt? Nothing would be lost, right? Just wondering. Right now, my system mounts it automatically when I boot up and its working out nicely.

thorkelljarl

The tree...

If you mounted the drive as, for example, /data at /home, you are adding it to the linux file tree under /home, that is adding a mount point under the home directory. You can see where you now have it mounted with the command "mount" See man mount.

http://linux.die.net/man/8/mount

http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/mounting.html

You were asked if you wanted to format the HDD as /home, /temp, etc., something that you did not want since you already have these directories, but you could have created a partition with its own mount point, creating another directory similar to /home, /temp, etc. That attaches the file higher up the tree than the /data example above. Remember that everything in linux is a file, including your HDD.

i92guboj

Well, I don't know where did it mount the drive. I really don't think it mounted it under /tmp/, /var/ or /home/. The partition manager should tell you where it's mounted. Using df or mount in the command line can also be informative.

As for your question, by mounting and unmounting no harm is done. If you mount a partition at a given /dir, then the contents of the dir can be seen, and when you enter /dir you see the contents of the device that's been mounted there. But after unmounting it the original contents of /dir will still be there of course.

You can choose to mount the drive wherever else, in a different location the next time if you truly want/need.

gymnart

Thanks!
So the drive was mounted in /local. I picked that because I thought that /local was not used. I hope that I made a right choice. So far, I am checking my favorite apps to make sure. I also am looking up info on the directory tree.

Am I right? /local is not used by SuSE for any software or system stuff?

i92guboj

No idea. I am not a SuSE user. All I can tell you is that most distros don't use /local/ for anything, and also that the filesystem hierarchy standard doesn't define that directory for any special purpose either.

So, as long as SuSE doesn't use it for anything, you shouldn't have a problem. And probably, if the wizard used that by default, then maybe it's the way it's meant to be in SuSE.

As said, most distros use either dirs under /mnt/ or /media/ for mountpoints that are not part of the base system. So that's what I'd use, but that's just me).

The latest standard defines /media/ as the container for mount points used for removable media, and /mnt/ as the container for mount points used for temporary mounts. What this exactly means is open for debate. I've never been a big fan of this standard. But, in case you want to take a look:

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html

gymnart

After looking at that page I just found that this statement sounds kinda funny: Thanks for that info! Now I can enjoy my system and rest easier. I don't know why, but I seem to be getting too nervous these days about maintaining my computer. *shrug* Thanks again for dealing with this nervous newbie!

thorkelljarl

It isn't so much that it is used...

If /local is a directory, you should be able to mount to it.

However there are reasons for having partitions for some directories but not others.

A common partitioning scheme for a home system is swap, / (root), and /home. The / (root) partition will have var, dev, whatever, as directories under / (root) and as long as the / (root) partition is large enough to manage its allocation of space, will add data to the individual directories up to the size limit of / (root). The system won't run into a problem on any of its sub-directories caused by them filling their separate partitions to the limit.

A separate /home will allow any accident to happen to the linux installation, a re-installation, or a new installation of the same linux, without having to format the /home partition and loose its content. In openSUSE, the personal settings that you have made, located in /home as hidden files, should be carried over to the new openSUSE installation.

linux is choice, and you can do many things several ways, including arranging a partitioning as you need or as you please.

You can also arrange the mount points of your files several places. Indeed, there may be a difference between different linux distributions, causing at some point confusion and disarray as the distros diverge from one another.

"Local...local...local..."

In the same way, if you unwittingly diverge too much from what is the standard usage for your distro, you may find yourself out in the unknown without company when you need to ask for advice.