Add new disk drive running linux

add new disk drive: (you will need to be root to do this so be VERY careful)

First: you need to run fdisk on the new drive ( this is assuming your machine has recognized the disk and you have gone through the necessary steps in hooking up the hardware to the new disk. )
[ fdisk /dev/hda ] gets you to fidisk on first harddrive
[ fdisk /dev/hdb ] is second hdd.
You will need to put some partitions on the disk with fdisk. Know which disk you are adding and be familiar with the linux version of the fdisk program. To understand this you should know that a disk is referred to as a device by the software like this: /dev/hda ( the first IDE disk on a system )
/dev/hda forIDE disks ( where a represents disks a through h on IDE hardware )
/dev/sda for SCSI disks ( where a represents disks a through P on SCSI hardware )
/dev/eda for ESDI disks ( where a represents disks a through d on ESDI hardware )
/dev/xda for XT disks ( where a represents the two disks a or b on the XT machine )
( A device name refers to the entire disk.)
Next; make a file system on the disk partition/partitions you have created: [ mkfs /dev/hda1 ] ( formats the partition ) keep in mind that the mkfs command will use the default file system; if you want a different system see the manual page below for various options.
Next; Add your directory [ mkdir /new ] ( this is the directory for the new partition/partitions you have made )
Next; to facilitate mounting the partition/partitions: edit /etc/fstab; add the line
/dev/hdb1 /new ext2 defaults 1 1
Now; [ mount -a ] ( as root ) mounts all partitions in fstab.

MKFS(8) MKFS(8) NAME mkfs - build a Linux file system SYNOPSIS mkfs [ -V ] [ -t fstype ] [ fs-options ] filesys [ blocks ] DESCRIPTION mkfs is used to build a Linux file system on a device, usually a hard disk partition. filesys is either the device name (e.g. /dev/hda1, /dev/sdb2) or the mount point (e.g. /, /usr, /home) for the file sys- tem. blocks is the number of blocks to be used for the file system. The exit code returned by mkfs is 0 on success and 1 on failure. In actuality, mkfs is simply a front-end for the various file system builders (mkfs.fstype) available under Linux. The file system-specific builder is searched for in a number of directories like perhaps /sbin, /sbin/fs, /sbin/fs.d, /etc/fs, /etc (the precise list is defined at compile time but at least contains /sbin and /sbin/fs), and finally in the directories listed in the PATH enviroment variable. Please see the file system-specific builder manual pages for further details. OPTIONS -V Produce verbose output, including all file system-specific com- mands that are executed. Specifying this option more than once inhibits execution of any file system-specific commands. This is really only useful for testing. -t fstype Specifies the type of file system to be built. If not speci- fied, the default file system type (currently ext2) is used. fs-options File system-specific options to be passed to the real file sys- tem builder. Although not guaranteed, the following options are supported by most file system builders. -c Check the device for bad blocks before building the file system. -l filename Read the bad blocks list from filename -v Produce verbose output. BUGS All generic options must precede and not be combined with file system- specific options. Some file system-specific programs do not support the -v (verbose) option, nor return meaningful exit codes. Also, some file system-specific programs do not automatically detect the device size and require the blocks parameter to be specified. AUTHORS David Engel (david@ods.com) Fred N. van Kempen (waltje@uwalt.nl.mugnet.org) Ron Sommeling (sommel@sci.kun.nl) The manual page was shamelessly adapted from Remy Card's version for the ext2 file system. SEE ALSO fs(5), badblocks(8), fsck(8), mkdosfs(8), mke2fs(8), mkfs.bfs(8), mkfs.ext2(8), mkfs.ext3(8), mkfs.minix(8), mkfs.msdos(8), mkfs.vfat(8), mkfs.xfs(8), mkfs.xiafs(8) Version 1.9 Jun 1995 MKFS(8)