Mounting second hard drive for backup

I have a second 250GB SATA HDD I’d like to mount for the backups rather than backing up to my main HDD in case that one breaks. How should I go about doing this?

I’m new to Virtualmin on a dedicated server rather than VPS so I’m also wondering how I can add my second IP to the system? My host told me my main IP and the additional IP but I’m not sure how to setup the additional IP to point to my server so I can use it for a second nameserver.

Figured out the second part, added a virtual device, still looking for an answer on the first question.

Howdy,

Some systems will automatically mount a drive that you plug in… but some won’t :slight_smile:

What Linux distribution are you using?

And what is the output of the command “mount”?

-Eric

I’m using Debian, the command mount gives:

/dev/sda3 on / type ext3 (rw,grpquota,errors=remount-ro,usrquota)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/sda2 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sda6 on /tmp type ext3 (rw)

Okay, so that’s not currently mounted.

What output do you get if you run this command:

dmesg|grep ‘Attached SCSI’

-Eric

root@srv:~# dmesg|grep ‘Attached SCSI’
[ 1.410563] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[ 1.421118] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk

Okay, so it looks like your second drive is setup as /dev/sdb.

Do you already have a partition setup and formatted on it? If so, do you know what filesystem it’s using (ie, fat32? Ext3?)

-Eric

I believe not as I haven’t ever touched the drive.

Okay, then you’ll first need to use fdisk to partition your disk, then you’ll need to format it – and once it’s formatted, you’ll then be able to mount it.

You can run “fdisk /dev/sdb”, and then partition it from there.

-Eric

I just got this

WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It’s strongly recommended to
switch off the mode (command ‘c’) and change display units to
sectors (command ‘u’).
Tried running both those commands then tried fdisk /dev/sdb again but it just gives me that info again.

root@srv:~# fdisk /dev/sdb

WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It’s strongly recommended to
switch off the mode (command ‘c’) and change display units to
sectors (command ‘u’).

Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-30401, default 1):
Using default value 1
Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (1-30401, default 30401):
Using default value 30401

Command (m for help):

Actually I believe I was able to partition it but I’m not exactly sure what I did.

Edit: I surprised myself and actually figured it out, pretty easy really, but I didn’t know mounting and HDD into my filesystem was so easy.