Installing a data HDD above 2.2TB – VMFnet Knowledge Base

Find out what the disk device is with :

sudo df -Th
sudo fdisk -l
sudo parted -l

You should look for one that’s the same size as the disk you installed and one that’s not listed in the output of df -Th.

Make a directory to mount the drive on and change its owner :

sudo mkdir /Volumes/somename && sudo chown -R damien /Volumes/somename

Partition the disk using parted, to make sure that the partition table is GPT :

sudo parted -a optimal /dev/sdX
    (parted) mklabel gpt
    (parted) unit TB
    (parted) mkpart primary 0% 100%
    (parted) quit

Format the new disk as ext4 :

sudo mkfs.ext4 -L LABEL -m 0 -T largefile /dev/sdX1

-T for type, largefile is one inode per MB
-m 0 to free up the reserved superblocks, can also be done later with :
sudo tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdX1

Edit /etc/fstab and add the following line to the end :

/dev/sdX1 /Volumes/somename ext3 defaults 0 0

It is recommended using the device’s UUID in the fstab, so that even if the name changes when detecting hardware at boot, the disk is still correctly identified and mounted as the correct volume.

If you don’t know the UUID of the disk, you can find it with :
sudo blkid /dev/sdb1

Mount it so that it can be used :

sudo mount /Volumes/somename