I am running an older machine with a 10 gig and 160 gig hard drive. I originally installed linux on the 10 gig and it is mounted as / . Now I decided to use the computer to stream my music and thus bought the new HD. I am running GNUMP3d and it looks in the /var/music/ directory for the music and media. I am a newb and am wondering how to mount or config the new HD so that i can have the music on it. Currently it is not mounted or plugged in. thnx in advance.

what kind of drive?
since its an older machine, im assuming its standard IDE stuff.. no raid or sata or firewire.. correct?

if so, just plug in the drive as a slave drive on prim/secondary (whatever you decide) IDE connection and boot up the computer.

if this is the 2nd drive in the system, it will most likely be known as /dev/hdb to the system.

run 'cfdisk /dev/hdb' as root from a terminal/console. read the man page about it if you need some info about it.
it will bring up a nice and easy UI which is pretty self explanatory. create a partition on the drive of whatever size you want. then set the type for the drive.. will you be writting to it from windows? if so youll need it to be FAT32.. if it has nothing to do with windows, reiserfs should work just fine. then 'write' the changes to disk.

create a folder for where to mount this drive, as root, ie 'mkdir /mnt/music'

then edit your /etc/fstab file, as root, add this line, and save.

now type 'mount /mnt/music'. it should now be mounted fine, and will be whenever computer is booted. g'luck

edit: for the program your using, either edit its configuration so it looks where you have your music mounted, or mount it to where it looks (ie /var/whateverYouSaid..)

thanks, ill give it a try. you assumed everything correctly, IDE and no winblows in sight! Is it possible to mount it in other locations too? Since that program only streams audio, and the program for video will probably use another folder....

you can mount it to any folder that exists.. you should be able to know how to change the mount point (in your /etc/fstab).

its always smart to mount drives to /mnt/mntName as a standard. the program your using should allow you to specify where you want it to play/stream/whatever files from.. it wouldnt (i would think) be hardcoded at that /var/whatever location you said.

but if this is this case, which again im sure it isnt, or if u just dont want to change the program to point to your /mnt/whatever folder, you can of course just mount the drive to /var/whateverYouSaid... or better yet, leave the mount point as i said it to be, and create a 'symbolic link' (man ln) to the /var/whatever folder.

thanks for the reply, gave it a try and its working. I just changed the programs config to look in the new location.