Mount External Hard Drive Even Reboot

[zelrick]

Good Day DaniWeb Users,

I'm having hard time to mount my 3 TB External Hard Drive/Disk

I do mount my external hd using this command..

sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /media/Archive/

I do

df -lh

and seen my mounted device.

Here is my Problem:

1. When I enter fdisk -l ~ I saw a warning:

WARNING: The size of this disk is 3.0 TB (3000558944256 bytes).
DOS partition table format can not be used on drives for volumes
larger than 2.2 TB (2199023255040 bytes). Use parted(1) and GUID
partition table format (GPT).

what would be the problem? I do format it in a Windows Machine using Partition Wizard. and set it FAT32 since the Red Hat Machine can't find NTFS format. (That is my conclusion since my USB is Fat32 format and no problem at all)

1. Suddenly a Power Shut off happen then the system is down. What happen to my mounted External? Is there any solution to remain my mounted external?

2. Am I right with my code earlier? I'm not really good at linux.

3. My machine is Ubuntu and the one need to be mount is a Red Hat. I just used ssh command. Does it affect in mounting?

4. I have an existing folder name "Archive" which is not empty it has files inside. When I mount the external to this folder what will happen?

Thank you and Sorry for my bad english.

[rproffitt]

Something's off here. Red Hat has been mounting NTFS for years. https://access.redhat.com/solutions/23993 for example.

Maybe you left out detail like your Red Hat is way out of date?

[rubberman]

Standard boot/partition sectors (old style DOS ones) cannot handle more than 2.2TB disc sizes. As the warning states, you need to use a GPT partition table type. I don't know if Windows supports that or not. Also, RHEL systems (5.x and later) can handle NTFS file systems just fine. What version of RedHat are you using? FWIW, Windows may ignore the partition table type in this case, but I don't think you can use FAT for a 3+TB file system - NTFS will be required I think.

[CimmerianX]

You need GPT and NTFS.... if it's just going to be used for Redhat, then go ext4.

To mount automatically on each boot, use /etc/fstab to mount the drive via UID.

[rubberman]

@CimmerianX - I prefer to name the partitions so I can mount them in /etc/fstab by name instead of UID. Why? Because if I have to clone the drive due to incipient failure of a drive, I can clone it and the system will immediately recognize the partitions, whereas the UIDs will have changed with the new device - at least that has happened to me in the past.

[CimmerianX]

@rubberman... Would this work for a USB/external disk. I've always used UID for USB drives since the dive may get plugged into a different USB and perhaps get a different sd#. And yes if you clone, the UID will change... but dude, how often are you cloning your drives?

[zelrick]

Hello Sir/s,

Thank you for your replies and answering the question.

The work station have a RedHatEnterpriseLinuxClient release 5.6 (Tikanga)

and I do remote this station using an Ubuntu via VMware.

Sorry Sir I don't understand something like GPT or UID.. is this GPT is the Gparted Partition Editor?

Currently this is what I do:

1. df -lh / fdisk -l (To see my external Hard Disk)

2. sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /media/Archive/ (This Archive folder is not empty it has files inside)

3. df -lh (Seen this sdc1 and /media/Archive/ has same size)

4. sudo vim /etc/fstab (I add /dev/sdc1 /media/Archive/ ntfs defaults 0 0)
   But I remember I format this External to Fat32 but seeing the result in df -lh it is NTFS

5. sudo umount /dev/sdc1 /media/Archive/

At this moment all files inside of the /media/Archive/ gone but when I check df -lh it says:
Size: 2.8T | Used: 11g | Avail: 2.8T | Use%: 1%| Mounted on: /media/Archive

Anything I did wrong? The File inside of Archive is gone but I do have back up. I just test not to be empty.

[zelrick]

Hello Sir/s

An update:

I unplugged and plugged again the external.

and start using fdisk -l (/dev/sdd1)

and turns out that my sdc1 gone and sdd1 appear (my external Hard Disk)

when I use df -lh (/dev/sdc1) it exist.

I look for mtab also but I don't add anything there but it appears like this:

/dev/sdc1 /media/NMS_Archive vfat rw 0 0

This mounting hard to understand

[CimmerianX]

"sudo umount /dev/sdc1 /media/Archive/
At this moment all files inside of the /media/Archive/ gone "

Well yes.... all files are gone because you just unmounted the drive. The drive is still on the system, just not mounted so it will still show in 'df'.

[zelrick]

Hello Sir,

I keep on repeating the step I did and remove the umount procedure.

I found out about the UUID thing. I successfully reboot and auto mount it in my station.

My station has fedora, I don't own this fedora but I just try to this machine and I mount it.

The problem now is I trying this to red hat machine.. using VIM I get a red thing to the line that I just added.

UUID=567B-0050 (the red thing is on the word UUID= and also to the (minus) - )

I was looking to the internet if I need to download this UUID?

[zelrick]

Hello Sir/s

Just an update..

I just replace the UUID to straight path like /dev/sdc5 and poof it is auto mount now.

Thank you guys for the help.

Here is the final thing I did:

1. sudo vim /etc/fstab

2. Instead of UUID I use /dev/sdc5

3. this is the complete line I wrote.

/dev/sdc5 /media/Archive vfat defaults 1 2

1. I really don't know the 1 and 2 at the last line. When I did 0 0 it is not working. When I change this to 1 and 2 I think this solve the mystery.

Thank you again Sir. I will be creating new thread for my new problem.

I hope you can help me again.