Mounting of additional hard disks in Linux

Additional disks in Linux must be detected, partitioned, formatted, and mounted before use.

This guide covers the basic workflow for mounting extra HDDs or SSDs in Linux systems.

Step 1 — Detect Disk

List available disks:

fdisk -l

or

lsblk

Used to identify the new device (e.g. /dev/sdb).

Step 2 — Create Partition

Open disk utility:

fdisk /dev/sdb

Typical flow:

• n → new partition
• w → write changes

Step 3 — Format Disk

Example (ext4):

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1

Creates filesystem on the new partition.

Step 4 — Create Mount Point

mkdir /mnt/storage

Mount point = directory where the disk will be attached.

Step 5 — Mount Disk

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/storage

Verify:

df -h

Step 6 — Permanent Mount (fstab)

Get UUID:

blkid

Edit fstab:

nano /etc/fstab

Example:

UUID=xxxx /mnt/storage ext4 defaults 0 0

Ensures automatic mounting after reboot.

Summary

• detect disk → lsblk / fdisk -l
• partition → fdisk
• format → mkfs
• mount → mount
• persist → /etc/fstab

Full guide 👉 https://vsys.host/how-to/mounting-of-additional-hard-disks-in-linux