I need to mount a second hard drive to my ubuntu 12.10 system.
There are directions for installing a new drive in ubuntu and mounting partitions. However, it seems like there should be an easier way than guessing at the mystery options of fstab.
In addition, I need read and write access to the drive – but I don't want to chmod/chown the drive (or partition it) since it is a working ubuntu install. I just need to access and possibly modify some files on it.
Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000c2a48
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 586145791 293071872 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 586147838 976771071 195311617 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 586147840 605677567 9764864 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb6 605679616 976771071 185545728 83 Linux
What is the correct way to mount this hard drive without harming it?
Best Answer
No need to mess with fstab unless you want to auto mount your partitions at boot. In your case, you won't be mounting the drive itself but rather the partitions where your /home and all your files reside. It's hard to tell from your partitioning scheme where your files are but the command is painstakingly simple to mount these bad boys.
You must create a directory aka a mount point for this to work. /dev/sdb1 represents the first partition on your second hard drive and /mnt/HDD1 is the mount point - just an example and you can easily create and name this whatever you like.
Once this is done it is only a matter of navigating to your mount point /mnt/HDD1/ to access your files. Do the same process with the other partitions but make sure to use different mount points.