Hard Drive question

OK, I am new at this but managed to get my Fedora 15 LAMP installed, up and running. NOW I want to add a second hard drive to use as a back up for my server. I installed the second HD (both are SATA's) as a slave and it shows up in my BIOS. I have looked till I am blue in the face but have not found anything about this. So my questions are as follows:

1) What is the command line to detect what HD's are on my server?
2) How do I format the slave HD?
3) How do I copy files to the second HD for back up?

I appreciate anyones help!!!!!

 

Code:

fdisk -l

Let's assume your new hard drive is named /dev/sdb. Run

Code:

fdisk /dev/sdb

to format it. If you just want to create one partition on it (/dev/sdb1), this would look as follows:

Code:

server1:~# fdisk /dev/sdb

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 10443.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): [COLOR="Red"]<-- m[/COLOR]
Command action
   a   toggle a bootable flag
   b   edit bsd disklabel
   c   toggle the dos compatibility flag
   d   delete a partition
   l   list known partition types
   m   print this menu
   n   add a new partition
   o   create a new empty DOS partition table
   p   print the partition table
   q   quit without saving changes
   s   create a new empty Sun disklabel
   t   change a partition's system id
   u   change display/entry units
   v   verify the partition table
   w   write table to disk and exit
   x   extra functionality (experts only)

Command (m for help): [COLOR="Red"]<-- n[/COLOR]
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
[COLOR="Red"]<-- p[/COLOR]
Partition number (1-4): [COLOR="Red"]<-- 1[/COLOR]
First cylinder (1-10443, default 1): [COLOR="Red"]<-- <ENTER>[/COLOR]
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-10443, default 10443): [COLOR="Red"]<-- <ENTER>[/COLOR]

Command (m for help): [COLOR="Red"]<-- t[/COLOR]
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): [COLOR="Red"]<-- L[/COLOR]

 0  Empty           1e  Hidden W95 FAT1 80  Old Minix       be  Solaris boot
 1  FAT12           24  NEC DOS         81  Minix / old Lin bf  Solaris
 2  XENIX root      39  Plan 9          82  Linux swap / So c1  DRDOS/sec (FAT-
 3  XENIX usr       3c  PartitionMagic  83  Linux           c4  DRDOS/sec (FAT-
 4  FAT16 <32M      40  Venix 80286     84  OS/2 hidden C:  c6  DRDOS/sec (FAT-
 5  Extended        41  PPC PReP Boot   85  Linux extended  c7  Syrinx
 6  FAT16           42  SFS             86  NTFS volume set da  Non-FS data
 7  HPFS/NTFS       4d  QNX4.x          87  NTFS volume set db  CP/M / CTOS / .
 8  AIX             4e  QNX4.x 2nd part 88  Linux plaintext de  Dell Utility
 9  AIX bootable    4f  QNX4.x 3rd part 8e  Linux LVM       df  BootIt
 a  OS/2 Boot Manag 50  OnTrack DM      93  Amoeba          e1  DOS access
 b  W95 FAT32       51  OnTrack DM6 Aux 94  Amoeba BBT      e3  DOS R/O
 c  W95 FAT32 (LBA) 52  CP/M            9f  BSD/OS          e4  SpeedStor
 e  W95 FAT16 (LBA) 53  OnTrack DM6 Aux a0  IBM Thinkpad hi eb  BeOS fs
 f  W95 Ext'd (LBA) 54  OnTrackDM6      a5  FreeBSD         ee  EFI GPT
10  OPUS            55  EZ-Drive        a6  OpenBSD         ef  EFI (FAT-12/16/
11  Hidden FAT12    56  Golden Bow      a7  NeXTSTEP        f0  Linux/PA-RISC b
12  Compaq diagnost 5c  Priam Edisk     a8  Darwin UFS      f1  SpeedStor
14  Hidden FAT16 <3 61  SpeedStor       a9  NetBSD          f4  SpeedStor
16  Hidden FAT16    63  GNU HURD or Sys ab  Darwin boot     f2  DOS secondary
17  Hidden HPFS/NTF 64  Novell Netware  b7  BSDI fs         fd  Linux raid auto
18  AST SmartSleep  65  Novell Netware  b8  BSDI swap       fe  LANstep
1b  Hidden W95 FAT3 70  DiskSecure Mult bb  Boot Wizard hid ff  BBT
1c  Hidden W95 FAT3 75  PC/IX
Hex code (type L to list codes): [COLOR="Red"]<-- 83[/COLOR]
Changed system type of partition 1 to 83 (Linux)

Command (m for help): [COLOR="Red"]<-- w[/COLOR]
The partition table has been altered!

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

Next you must create a filesystem on the new partition, e.g. ext4:

Code:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1

You must mount the partition to a directory - the directory must exist. For example, if you want to mount it to /backup, create that directory first:

Code:

mkdir /backup

Then mount /dev/sdb1 to /backup:

Code:

mount /dev/sdb1 /backup

Afterwards you can copy your backups to the /backup directory.

 

Thanks Falko; I got to the part where you said to create a filesystem on the new partition. When I try to do that I get the following message:

"/dev/sdb1/ is apparently in use by the system; will not make a file system here."

What do I need to do here?

 

Based on what I have found researching this issue it looks like my second hard drive has a RAID configuration in the MBR of the HD. I am too NEW at using LINUX commands/command lines. Apparently there is a way to delete this or stop the problem but I have NO way of knowing how or what to do. Anyone with any ideas?

Thanks in advance

 

Try this:

Code:

mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sdb1

 

Dang, that didn't work either. It said: "mdmadm: Couldn't open /dev/sdb1 for write - not zeroing"

 

How about

Code:

mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sdb

?

 

I tried that as well but it did not work either.

 

Apparently this guy has figured out what the problem was (exactly like mine) and fixed it but I can't make heads or tails of it.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=667317