Hello,
I’ve added a 1TB hard drive as a second hard drive on my PC, mostly because my home partition is full of music and movies, but I am unsure of where to mount it (or what to mount it as). “Yast Partitioner” suggested /tmp /srv or /local
I basically want a storage solution for media files which can be accessed by multiple users (including a windows PC using samba). What is the convention?
Certainly not /tmp !!!
I would mount it as /data .
Not /srv either, that’s used by webservers, FTP servers and their ilk. Here are some ideas:
/local
/data
/extra
/shared
Basically do not use any of the existing directories on Linux, think of a new name.
The actual name is up to you of course, but I use:
/Windows
/Software
as two choices. But what I wanted to add was that you can use the YaST / System / Partitioner to add the folder for you. Once fired up (The Partitioner, You must answer Yes to the first question), and with your new drive attached beforehand, find the new drive in the listing on the right window as sdb or sdc (or what ever it is called) and right click on it and select add partition. In the add partition window, select the partition type and elect to format it. I use ext4 for Linux partitions and NTFS for Windows partitions, but you can not create a NTFS partition here and must do that in Windows if you wanted that. Finally, at the bottom is a mount selection. Here is where you add where to be mounted, like /Software for instance. The cool part is once done with the Partitioner, your drive will be added to the fstab file for you automatically, ready for your next reboot and mounted for you the moment you exit the partition program, ready for use right away.
Thank You,
On Sun, 24 Oct 2010 05:36:03 +0530, Robertple4 <Robertple4@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> Hello,
> I’ve added a 1TB hard drive as a second hard drive on my PC, mostly
> because my home partition is full of music and movies, but I am unsure
> of where to mount it (or what to mount it as). “Yast Partitioner”
> suggested /tmp /srv or /local
> I basically want a storage solution for media files which can be
> accessed by multiple users (including a windows PC using samba). What is
> the convention?
not sure if there’s a convention about that. IMO it depends what you want to use the extra space for. i mount separate partitions at ~/Videos and ~/Music, but you could as well move your whole /home/ directory to the larger drive, giving it enough space to hold all the videos & music you might ever want.
–
phani.
On Sun, 24 Oct 2010 06:06:02 +0530, ken yap <ken_yap@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> Basically do not use any of the existing directories on Linux, think of
> a new name.
that’s ok, but since most programs refer by default to ~/Music and ~/Videos, i prefer to use the same dir.s that already exist. you can create partitions on the new HDD, make filesystems, format, then move everything that’s already in ~/Music or ~/Videos to these new partitions (while they are temporarily mounted on /mnt or somewhere). then mount the new partition at the location of the (now empty) original directories (via fstab), and all programs will go there by default. otherwise it’s more trouble to change all the defaults.
–
phani.
Mounting on subdirectories of existing partitions certainly is supported and the whole Unix mount concept does generalise, but if you do too many levels of this, you end up with mount order dependencies and having to exclude directories from finds and other workarounds (but then again, it may be good to have them included in finds).
Another strategy is just to make symlinks from ~/Music, etc to the actual location. Also means you don’t have to split up your extra storage into a Music partition and a Videos partition, but just pool the storage. And then perhaps you are not the only user on the system, others may have their Music and Videos.
Another possibility is a bind mount.
Lots of solutions.
On Sun, 24 Oct 2010 07:06:02 +0530, ken yap <ken_yap@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> Mounting on subdirectories of existing partitions certainly is supported
> and the whole Unix mount concept does generalise, but if you do too many
> levels of this, you end up with mount order dependencies and having to
> exclude directories from finds and other workarounds (but then again, it
> may be good to have them included in finds).
yes, it’s perhaps not as fool- and error-proof as mounting to a new location. i remember having had problems at one stage of KDE development (can’t remember the version no.), when apparently those mounts from a different HDD showed up too late and processes timed out. at times something would hang, ksysguard showing “disksleep”, which needed to be killed. not nice. at present though my out-sourced system works fine…
> Another strategy is just to make symlinks from ~/Music, etc to the
> actual location. Also means you don’t have to split up your extra
> storage into a Music partition and a Videos partition, but just pool the
> storage. And then perhaps you are not the only user on the system,
> others may have their Music and Videos.
yes, that’s what i did when KDE allegedly didn’t mount the partitions fast enough.
> Another possibility is a bind mount.
have to read up on that; never heard the expression…
> Lots of solutions.
definitely, and no real standard, as the OP was asking for; depends what you want to do & what works best in your situation.
–
phani.
I always mount my 2nd hard drive’s under /home somewhere.
If I want only one user (ie oldcpu) to see the drive, I will mount it under /home/oldcpu.
If I want all users to see the drive, I will mount it under /home/data (and adjust permissions accordingly).
I confess I would be worried about mounting it under /data or /<anything>. If one were to do a clean re-install, and forget that the second hard drive is mounted at /data, and if one decide to wipe / (with a clean format) and keep /home, would not /data be wiped by mistake ? I don’t know for certain but that scenario worries me, and that is just the sort of mistake that I would make. Hence putting under /home assures me that would not happen.
Edit - I’m 1/2 asleep. Thinking about this, and the structure of the openSUSE installer, this would NOT happen, and /data or /<anything> is safe ! Disregard my concern above
On 2010-10-24 02:36, please try again wrote:
>
> Certainly not /tmp !!!
> I would mount it as /data .
Me too.
I mount them under /data, giving them (I have more than one) names like storage_a, storage_b… Or
Videos or whatever. You can also create subdirectories for each user with their ownership, like an
expansion of their home.
As all are mounted under /data, I can easily exclude or include in system backups, searchs, etc: I
don’t have to remember the several names of things hanging from root, which is what I did previously.
My other convention is that external media manually mounted go to /mnt/something.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
On 2010-10-24, oldcpu <oldcpu@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> I always mount my 2nd hard drive’s under /home somewhere.
I’d do /data, or /mnt/data (with a link to my home dir, maybe).
> I confess I would be worried about mounting it under /data or
> /<anything>. If one were to do a clean re-install, and forget that the
> second hard drive is mounted at /data, and if one decide to wipe / (with
> a clean format) and keep /home, would not /data be wiped by mistake ? I
> don’t know for certain but that scenario worries me, and that is just
> the sort of mistake that I would make. Hence putting under /home
> assures me that would not happen.
Wouldn’t a clean install just format the / partition? I’m assuming your home
/is on another partition, so no worries about that. And that would apply to
/the /data volume, too.
It’s on a different partition, so it won’t be formatted along with /. The
worst that could happen, is you forget to create the mount point in the new
install. Restore a backup of /etc/fstab, or simply redefine the mount point.
–
When in doubt, use brute force.
– Ken Thompson
Indeed the /data is on another partition and is safe.
I made a note of that mistake (of mine) in an edit to my post, and I tried to edit my reply/edit before the NNTP gateway fired out my reply, but looks like I failed.
When you, user Robertple4, want to put your videos on it, mount it at /home/Robertple4/Videos/. This to show that it is you that knows what you bought this diisk space for, and thus it is you that can decide where you want this disk space mounted. Not we.
You may also want to read a bit in SDB:Basics of partitions, filesystems, mount points - openSUSE. There you can e.g. learn that one does not mount a “harddisk”, but one mounts a file system. And a file system is on a partition. And a partition is (possibly together with other partitions) on a disk (or disk emulating hardware like USB storage devices). Thus you will then understand that you can partition your big disk, create file systems on those partitions and mount them all according to your need on different (very different) places in the directory tree.
On 2010-10-24 10:06, oldcpu wrote:
> I confess I would be worried about mounting it under /data or
> /<anything>. If one were to do a clean re-install, and forget that the
> second hard drive is mounted at /data, and if one decide to wipe / (with
> a clean format) and keep /home, would not /data be wiped by mistake ? I
> don’t know for certain but that scenario worries me, and that is just
> the sort of mistake that I would make. Hence putting under /home
> assures me that would not happen.
Make sure your partitions have meaningful labels: they show in the yast partitioner, and you can see
what each partition is for, visually. Also, print, in paper, your current partition layout (fdisk
and fstab). With notes. Have it available. Mark it in yellow or red what you have to take care off.
Finally, when installing fresh, there is an option to make the partitioner read an existing fstab:
the new install will have the exact same layout as the old one.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
On 2010-10-24, oldcpu <oldcpu@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> Rikishi42;2242985 Wrote:
>> Wouldn’t a clean install just format the / partition? I’m assuming your
>> home /is on another partition, so no worries about that. And that would
>> apply to
>> /the /data volume, too.
> Indeed the /data is on another partition and is safe.
>
> I made a note of that mistake (of mine) in an edit to my post, and I
> tried to edit my reply/edit before the NNTP gateway fired out my reply,
> but looks like I failed.
A follow-up post is much bettter, even in http (for those that read the
original before you changed it).
–
When in doubt, use brute force.
– Ken Thompson
thankyou for the replies and suggestions 
For the record, I chose /shared