I don't see a 3TB disk

I have 2 disks in my PC: one is 1TB where I have installed Lubuntu and another one 3TB (empty for now). I see both disks correctly in Disks, Gparted and KDE partition manager. But I can not make it visible to my system (eg File Manager, Double Commaner).

My objectives are
1) create 1 partition in the 3TB disk
2) assign a label and mount point
3) use it "as usual" from any file manager.

Can you help me step by step? I tried with all three mentioned programs but I can't really make it work.

This is the output of sudo blkid

/dev/sda1: UUID="6362-D394" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="4da2498d-8faf-4604-8e66-e9afdc2f8781"
/dev/sda2: UUID="9387db92-e022-4078-8fae-bf9359cc9edc" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="2fa7df9a-40f3-4f7d-8d76-22f28b3a8127"
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="3TB-Data" UUID="c994cec3-c8d9-4ad5-8d50-a1be4793c133" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="3TB" PARTUUID="b386733a-67ee-48bc-ad94-656fd1b3e736"
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop1: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop2: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop3: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop4: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop5: TYPE="squashfs"

This is the output of lsblk -f

NAME FSTYPE LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINT
loop0 squashfs 0 100% /snap/core18/1288
loop1 squashfs 0 100% /snap/snapd/5754
loop2 squashfs 0 100% /snap/core18/1279
loop3 squashfs 0 100% /snap/gnome-3-28-1804/110
loop4 squashfs 0 100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/1353
loop5 squashfs 0 100% /snap/libreoffice/163
sda
├─sda1 vfat 6362-D394 291.7M 3% /boot/efi
└─sda2 ext4 9387db92-e022-4078-8fae-bf9359cc9edc 856.8G 1% /
sdb
└─sdb1 ext4 3TB-Data c994cec3-c8d9-4ad5-8d50-a1be4793c133 

And here the current contents of /etc/fstab file:

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
UUID=6362-D394 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 2
UUID=9387db92-e022-4078-8fae-bf9359cc9edc / ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdb1 /media/user01/2TB disk ext4 users 0 0 

As you can see, the last line of the fstab file looks a little weird, right? I guess I should change the fstab file. To avoid modifying fstab manually, I tried Disk's "Mount at system startup" option. But I guess I will need to do it manually, right?

Here I show the information shown by Disks for each disk and partition:

7

1 Answer

If the issue lies with partitioning

to format a partition with full control, first open any terminal.

lsblk and fstab shows that /dev/sdb is your 3TB drive. so first we shall create the partition table (blueprint for future houses)

then we shall create the first partition(the first house built using the blueprint)

then we shall create the filesystem of the partition(describes how things should be placed and organized within this house.)

your drive requires a GPT partition table because of its size, and we want a single partition for the entire device.

$sudo parted /dev/sdb - will ask for password and start parted aiming only at your 3TB drive
(parted) mktable gpt - will turn it into a GPT table
(parted) rm 1 - will remove the existing partition
(parted) mkpart primary 0% 100% - will create a new partition covering 100% of space
(parted) quit - brings you back to terminal

Now we need to create a filesystem within this partition. you have many options here, the most common being ext4 NTFS Fat32 exFat(Fat64)

Exfat is best if you plan on using this drive with windows, mac, and linux machines

NTFS is best if you plan on using only windows

ext4 is best if you plan on using only linux

Pick one of these

sudo mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sdb1 - will format partition 1 to fat32
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1 - to ext4

If instead you want exFat

sudo apt-get install exfat-utils exfat-fuse - will install exfat functionallity and tools
sudo mkfs.exfat /dev/sdb1 - will format it to exfat

at this point we have a fully functioning partition that should be picked up as a mountable filesystem.

if you would like to name it use one of these commands

sudo e2label /dev/sdb1 NAMEHERE - ext4
sudo ntfslabel /dev/sdb1 NAMEHERE - ntfs
sudo exfatlabel /dev/sdb1 NAMEHERE - exFat

if you follow and understand this without solving your issue, then the problem does not lie within partitioning.

a simple way to test is if all drives act like this than its not the drives themselves, if only this single one does this than more than likely its a problem with partitioning or possibly a failing hard drive that needs to be replaced.

P.S. you can manually mount this in the exact way the system does by using this command

udisksctl mount -b /dev/sdb1

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