BleepingComputer.com: mount whole HD to folder

ok was reading this: mount tutor

I have 2 HD-s, each 500 GB

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Well, all I can tell is that I can't tell what m'I looking at. There must be something on one HD(I belive marked (/dev/sda1) otherwise there would be nothing there.
On another forum I was told that OS sees both disks as one disk.

All I need is to have one of those HD-s separately mounted to one folder, how can I do that ?

Unix-like systems contain all physical drives within the root filesystem, where they look like directories. Look in the /media or /mnt directory for your drives. If they're mounted, they should be there.

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That is the important one.


I am not sure how much you know about linux but I will try and give you a rough overview.

There are no drive letters under Linux. Instead, the root of the file-system, known as C:\ under Windows, is identified simply by a forward
slash (/). Each device is listed as a device in the /dev folder. All drives start with a "sd" or "hd" depending on their type. Yours start with the "sd". To differentiate physical drives are letters denoting the actual physical drives eg. the letters a,b,c. So that makes the first drive in your system "sda". Finally the partition number is added to drive you are looking at. So the first partition on drive "a" would look like (for you at least) "sda1".
Therefore it would be listed as a device as "/dev/sda1". The next physical drive will be listed as "/dev/sdb" and with the partition included it would be listed as "/dev/sdb1". Note that "/dev/sda1" and "/dev/sdb1" are different, they are 2 physical drives. This is different than in Windows, where each partition or drive would be listed as a different drive letter. For example what would be "/dev/sda1" and "/dev/sda2" to linux, would be drives C: and D: to Windows, even though it is the same physical drive. And what is "/dev/sda1" and "/dev/sdb1" to linux would also be drives C: and D: to Windows because they are two different drives. See how it works? With linux there is a distinction between partition and drive. Whereas with Windows there is no such distinction.
Now why did u need all of that?
With that information we can now interpret the results of fdisk -l much better.

/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux

we know that /dev/sda1 is your first drive and your first partition.

/dev/sda2 14 60801 488279610 8e Linux LVM

we know that /dev/sda1 is your first drive and your second partition.

/dev/sdb1 * 1 60801 488384001 8e Linux LVM

we know that /dev/sda1 is your second drive and your first partition.

That is your second drive.

Now to mount it. This is the simple part. You should first try (do all of this in terminal or console from here on i will use the term BASH)

mount /dev/sdb1

(if your operating system requires sudo go ahead and use it if you need it.)

you will probably get something like

mount: can't find /dev/sdb2 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

This is fine, because all it means is that the system does not know while folder to put this drive in.

Next in your BASH prompt type in:

mkdir /media/sdb2

or

mkdir /mnt/sdb2

(if your operating system requires sudo go ahead and use it if you need it.)
Depending on your operating system its different. If you have a /media folder then put it in there.

Finally type in:

mount /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb2

or

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb2

(if your operating system requires sudo go ahead and use it if you need it.)

Finally navigate to to that folder on your drive, and you should see the contents of the drive in that folder.


I suggest you look at this free book: Ubuntu Pocket Reference. It gives a fairly good tutorial of Linux, and while it is focused on Ubuntu, you can learn a lot from it.

hope this helps
~powerjuce

Edit: Added the link to book.

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--> some message that I have to specify file system, so:

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now I can without "-t ext3":

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I read somewhere I should disable device-mapper , rebot and then this would work.

dm-mod/dm-mirror <-- where is that, if I should touch that at all ?

note: if I look at folder mnt/sdb2 permisions it says for owner : cant wiev & modify content. Is that ok ?

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based on that you should be able to go to the /mnt/sdb2 folder and use that

may i ask what distro you are using?

centOS, I can go there and use it, but it is directorry like all others, I mean if that would be it then
/dev/sdb1 should be mentioned down below , right ?

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it may not be mounted, however it will still be visible through that folder
sometimes it is done like that for convenience

ok, done it like this.

link

Thanks for all help.