Trying to mount a hard drive on a previous Windows system
 

I have purchased a new machine on which to run Fedora Server 25. When I installed it, I ran df and found that most of the available disk is not mounted. The machine came with a 3 TB hard drive and a smaller SSD. I installed Fedora on the SSD. I have found device names that appear to be correct for the hard drive, but can't mount them because Windows had formatted them (from the manufacturer) before I installed Linux.

How do I:

1) verify which device(s) are for the 3 TB hard drive?
2) format them for use by Linux?
3) identify the correct filesystem type to use in fstab?

Any help will be gratefully appreciated!!!

so you're stuck in windows trying to figure out whats what?
disk manager in windows its kind of like Gparted, you can see the drives,
I'd go by sizes to try and figure out what is what. the sdd is defiantly going to be the smaller one.

if you are in linux be sure you got ntfs-3 installed and then you can get to the windows formatted hdds to try and figure out what is what better. Gparted will help to in identifying types

fdisk -l /dev/sdx too will and parted -l /dev/sdx will too tell you what formate is what.

fstab can mount any format Linux is completable with

Actually, no, I have no use for whatever Windows put on that drive. It was booted under Windows one time only, to verify that the hardware was ok before I installed Linux. I wanted the OS to have the solid state drive, for speed reasons. So, during the Fedora install, I told it to use that drive (wiping out the Windows installation). It didn't occur to me that of course the 3 TB hard drive was formatted for Windows, and I just want to wipe it and have it available for Linux files as if it never had any Windows formatting done to it. So I need to format it, but I also don't know which device it is. I have /sdb /sdb1 /sdb2 out there, are all of these part of the 3TB hard drive? Do these need to remain separate partitions due to maximum file system size limitations? Would that then mean 3 or 4 new entries to fstab? See... I'm confused.

I don't have very good advice to give you, I just have a word of warning. Because the 3TB drive is bigger than 2TB, it most likely has GPT rather than MBR partitioning. This is not a big deal if you're using a user friendly GUI - you can just use the graphical partitioning tool "gparted" and it knows what to do.

But assuming you don't want to install a full blown GUI on Fedora Server 25, then you'll have to learn the command line tools.

Which I was about to start to type advice on, except I'm only familiar with the MBR command line tools.

OIC:
Open Gparted it has a drop down list that will only let you see one drive at a time, then you can see what is what. look at image to get an idea.

that is a 256GB SDD

while you're in Gparted and if you are in fact installed on the sdd then you can just delete what ever you want and set it up how ever you want, usually ext4 is most common for Linux ..

sda is primary drive
sdb is secondary drive

or you could just pull the 3TB drive and make sure your sdd is master and then install Linux then slap your 3TB drive back in and format it for Linux.

Hmm...I don't know how the Fedora Server install disc works, but many linux install discs give you a user friendly partitioning tool with which you can view and change partitions even if you do not ultimately go through with the install.

Or you can use a LiveCD, most of which include gparted. That way, you can use a user friendly GUI tool to do the partition management, while leaving the Fedora Server 25 install clean and lean.

Ok, here's what I have learned so far... I have installed a GUI interface, but can't find "Gparted" anywhere (GYI or command line). In the GUI "files" selection, I clicked on "+ Other Locations", and found that I have two listed: "Computer" (obviously the SSD), and "DATA" which is associated to /dev/sdb1. So, can I assume that sdb1 is the 3TB drive?

More info. Apparently, Fedora 25 has "parted". In that tool, I used "select /dev/sdb1", then "print".
It returned (under the following labels: Number Start End Size File System)
1 0.00B 2989GB 2989GB ntfs

So, the whole enchilada is under /dev/sdb1 then?

To install gparted in Fedora: sudo dnf install gparted

Ok, installed gparted. It is showing 2 partitions, /dev/sdb1 with the label "Data" and 2.72 TB flags "msftdata" (whatever that means).
Then, there's /sdv/sdb2 with the label "RECOVERY" and 11.06 GB and having the flags "hidden, msftdata".

So, if I could just get /sdb1 reformatted and mountable, I would be good to go.

taking it that a Linux is installed on it then it has to be your sdd already which is/would be sda

that all be windows I'd say sdb is windows looks like who ever had it before you? set it up for sdd to be primary for the same reasons you want to, because it is faster, and that sdb is all windows OS and everything windows just delete everything sdb and it will be one big hard drive then select 'Device" create partition table select GPT then format it whatever, ext2, ext3, ext4 ect. and it all will be one big sdb1 secondary drive.

if you want to partition it then you can do that too because you said NO WINDOWS

oh yeah just right click -> unmount then right click delete on them little windows in GParted. if they need unmounting else just right click delete all of them one at a time

That did it!!! Thanks all, especially BW-USERX!

What does gparted say on how sdb1 is formatted? NTFS? or what? Because linux doesn't have a problem with windows file systems. You might just need to put a line in your fstab file.

:thumbsup: NP glad you got'er done :thumbsup:

It showed as NTFS, but I understand that NTFS is not the most efficient for disk space, so I wanted to use something more native to Linux. The space will mostly be database space.

if you are not going to access it with Windows then I see no point in using ntfs

Exactly.

I really appreciate!