Knowledgebase

Adding a new disk drive to Centos 6

Installing a new HDD

The disk drives in Centos is named hd* or sd*. In system with only one HDD you should receive following output:

# ls /dev/sd*
/dev/sda  /dev/sda1  /dev/sda2

Now connect new HDD to the system. If it is visible to BIOS it will be automatically detected by OS.
After new HDD is installed output of the same system will be like this:

# ls /dev/sd*
/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb

The new HDD is assigned sdb with no partitions. A new partitions can be created on the new HDD and then mounted or the disk can be added to an existing volume group as a physical volume.

Creating partitions

Creating partitions using fdisk utility (root rights required).

# fdisk /dev/sdb
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0xd1082b01.
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to
         switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to
         sectors (command 'u').

Command (m for help):

Switch off DOS compatible mode and change the units to sectors by entering the c and u commands:

Command (m for help): c
DOS Compatibility flag is not set
Command (m for help): u
Changing display/entry units to sectors

In order to view the current partitions on the disk enter the p command:

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 34.4 GB, 34359738368 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4177 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd1082b01

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

fdisk output shows that the disk has no partitions yet because it has not been used before. New partition can be created by entering n (for new partition) and p (for primary partition):

Command (m for help): n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4):

Currently we plan to create only one partition - partition 1, so the first available sector will be beginning and the last one will be end. If you wish to create multiple partitions you can specify the size of each partition by sectors, bytes, kilobytes or megabytes.

Partition number (1-4): 1
First sector (2048-67108863, default 2048):
Using default value 2048
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-67108863, default 67108863):
Using default value 67108863

Now when partition is specified write it to disk by entering w:

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

The new partition is now visible as /dev/sdb1:

# ls /dev/sd*
/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb /dev/sdb1

The next step is to create file system on the new partition with mkfs.ext4 utility.

# /sbin/mkfs.ext4 -L /backup /dev/sdb1
mke2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Filesystem label=/backup
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
2097152 inodes, 8388352 blocks
419417 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=4294967296
256 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
        4096000, 7962624

Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 36 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first.  Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.

Now when a file system on the new partition is created we need to mount it so that it is accessible. For example, let's create a directory /media which will be our mountpoint.

# mkdir /media

Mount file system:

# mount /dev/sdb1 /media

Running the mount command with no arguments shows us all currently mounted file systems (including our new file system):

# mount
/dev/mapper/vg_CentOS6-lv_root on / type ext4 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,rootcontext="system_u:object_r:tmpfs_t:s0")
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext4 (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
/dev/sr0 on /media/CentOS_6.0 x86_64 Disc 1 type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=500,gid=500,
iocharset=utf8,mode=0400,dmode=0500)
/dev/sdb1 on /media type ext4 (rw)

In order to Centos automatically mount new file system at boot add it to /etc/fstab file. Below is shown fstab configured to automount /media at boot:

/dev/mapper/vg_centos6-lv_root /            ext4    defaults        1 1
UUID=0d06ebad-ea73-48ad-a50a-1b3b8ef24491 /boot  ext4    defaults        1 2
/dev/mapper/vg_centos6-lv_swap swap         swap    defaults        0 0
tmpfs                   /dev/shm            tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts            devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc               proc    defaults        0 0
LABEL=/backup /media      ext4    defaults        1 2

Also Read