Adding a new hard disk to Linux, and why the Linux filesystem trounces Windows' butt

By David M Williams
Wednesday, 01 October 2008 20:02

Opinion and Analysis

Adding a second (or third or more!) hard drive to your computer is a great way to, well, give your computer more disk space. Ok, the concept is pretty logical but the process to make it work needs some explanation. Here’s what to do, plus one thing the Linux filesystem does brilliantly which Windows can’t do at all.

”I didn’t know you could do that in Linux” is the topic for this month. I want you to get the most out of your Linux experience. Or, if you are Linux-curious then I hope to give you the confidence that Linux really does work well and can meet your needs.

No matter the operating system, one thing which is universally true is you can improve a computer by beefing it up – whether by adding RAM, improving the processor or, in this case, adding an additional hard drive.

Having extra disk space means more room for programs and more room for data. That includes word processing documents and e-mail but especially disk-hungry video and music files as well as high resolution photographs.

Now, how you actually physically connect the new hard disk will vary depending on the type of computer you have and the type of connections it supports. Most modern machines will take SATA disks, but it’s possible your computer requires IDE or even SCSI drives. External USB hard drives are also commonplace now.

No matter, there are many extremely good tutorials on the Internet to help you determine the type of hard drive appropriate for you and how to plug it in. Where I want to pick up is what you actually do to make Linux recognise it and work with it.

One characteristic about Linux is that ultimately everything is a file. Your running processes can be examined by looking at the files listed in /proc. Similarly, hardware devices are treated like files, and a means of accessing them can be found in the collection of items under the /dev directory.

Let me tell you how to make sense of what you’ll find there.

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