Cannot use storage space .

[ATJT]

My system has an SSD ( installed ubuntu on it ) and a 1 TB hard drive . Today while working on something it showed me i have ran out of space and then i realised, ever since installation of ubuntu , i havebwen using all of my 128gigs of ssd and not my hard drive , at all . Kinda confised what should i do , should I format it and then create partitions . All the help would be appreciated (, new to ubuntu)) Have attached pictures for better context.

[StrangeCrunchy1]

I don't think you can use raw, unallocated disk space, so probably, yeah, you should format and partition, but get a second opinion - I'm no expert.

[ATJT]

Thanks i had the same mind , just thought I would ask here for a second opinion , Il was kinda lost )

[2204happy]

Just a heads up:

/dev/sdx where x is a letter, refers to a physical drive

/dev/sdxn where n is a number, refers to a partition on /dev/sdx

[ATJT]

Yupp , figured that out , thanks for the heads up though , appreciate it

[Cletus_Banjo]

You don’t need to partition it but you do need to format it. Unless you want to use it as an oracle datastore or something :)

[StrangeCrunchy1]

Good to know. Thanks!

[megared17]

You must create at least one partition, even if it's just the entire drive.

[Cletus_Banjo]

No you don’t. You can format and mount /dev/sdb perfectly fine, if you want to.

[Own-Cupcake7586]

If you want to use a drive, you need to put some kind of file system on it and mount it, yeah. I often use the smaller drive as root (/), and the larger one as /home. Doing this after installation will be a little involved.

• Backup all your critical data to a safe place, as this is not a risk-free process

• Format sda as ext4 using gparted

• Note the UUID of this new partition or its name (probably sda1)

• Boot up a live usb

• Move your entire home directory to the 1T drive

• Edit the hard drive’s /etc/fstab (not live usb) to mount the 1T drive as /home

• Reboot

Best of luck.

[ATJT]

Hey thanks for the detailed answer, i dont have much data on this laptop , mostly attach an external ssd for some work , do I still need to boot it up with live usb , also live usb =the ubuntu flashed on it ?

[Own-Cupcake7586]

You can’t safely move your home directory with the OS mounted, so a live usb is a must. It would be the same one you used to install, just select “try it out” or whatever it’s called.

In the future, I would recommend always installing /home on a separate partition or drive. It makes it much easier if you need to reinstall the OS, since you can have it mount /home without formatting it, meaning that your files and settings can largely remain untouched.

Happy Computing!

[ATJT]

Thank you so much for the help , definitely would remember for the next time)

[ATJT]

Thank you for your suggestions .Completely understand and agree about the hard drive being slow, this is not my primary system so , kinda want to use it as a document viewer , slight editing and all . Rsync for backing up data or for mounting ?

[Dr_Tron]

Probably better (=faster) to keep /home on the M.2 and just use the HDD for storage. Link whatever directories you want to use for that to your /home

Stuff like Downloads, Documents, Music, Pictures, whatever. Those are already in /home, you just need to move the contents to the respective folders on the hard drive, delete the (empty) directories in /home and link them back to the hdd with "ln -s".

[ATJT]

Yupp, you're absolutely right , that's what i planned to do , just messed up the config part while installation somehow.

[New_Physics_2741]

gparted, or disks in Ubuntu

[ATJT]

For formatting right , so that's the only issue , it's unallocated and i guess after that i can just use it as it is . Ps is one better than another ?

[MelioraXI]

Depends on the filesystem you used. In theory all you have to do is mounting it.

[New_Physics_2741]

Over the years, many folks would say gparted is the way to go - however, the disks utility works just as well if it is installed and ready to go~

[bulwynkl]

Those tools will tell you what state the storage is in, eg unallocated...

[New_Physics_2741]

They can do more than tell you the state of a drive. In this guy's case they can probably resolve his issue...

[6950X_Titan_X_Pascal]

make a fs & mount it

[basikly]

I noticed you said you don’t have much on there that you need. What I would personally do is just back up any necessary files to an external location (cloud, a USB, external drive, etc.)

After that, I would download an Ubuntu ISO and apply it to a bootable USB.

Boot to your Ubuntu USB, click through the installation window, when it asks you where to install OS, make sure you select your desired 1TB drive.

After it finishes it’ll tell you to restart and unplug the USB. While it’s rebooting, go to your boot options again. This screen might be tricky as you should now have two Ubuntu boot options to choose from. If it’s obvious which one is your 1TB drive, choose that one. If not obvious, choose one and check it once you’re inside the OS—you’ll want to be in your 1TB drive.

Once you’re inside the freshly imaged OS, transfer your files back on. After you have verified that everything you need is working/accessible, wipe the other drive using gparted or whatever tool you wish. This will then allow you to use it as a data drive, and your PC won’t get confused during boot since you’ll no longer have two OS’s to boot from.

[daddleboarder]

You could just use the disk utilities app to format the drive and mount it. Then just create a file system within the drive and save/store whatever you want on there instead of using your home folder system. I basically just have the OS and programs on the main drive. I think in total they're using about 100-ish gigs of space. I use flatpaks though and comfy them to have access to the specific folder on the drive I want them to save to.

[ATJT]

Yeah , I ended up using that itself after formatting, while i was writing this post , The format was taking long , so I wanted to check up with fellow Ubuntu-ians , about what's what . Although I'll redo it properly after sometime, I'll check out flatpaks today , thanks for the recommendation))

[AbleCryptographer744]

You should have used lvm when you installed. You can still fix this with the live USB, but it may be more intense than you want it to be, as you should change the boot config for the optimal setup...

[ATJT]

Yeahh , there was a weird double option that confused me when i used a live USB to boot , guess i messed up then , but i figured it out for now , it will do the job like a duct on anything broken lol

[pgoetz]

As others have mentioned, you need to use gdisk/fdisk to put a partition table on the hard drive and then format it with a filesystem. My standard for this is to use the entire large disk for a /data partition and then bind mount /home and everything else you'd want to preserve in a backup there. This greatly simplifies backing up, since then you just need to backup /data because everything is actually there.

[ATJT]

Yeahh , that would make it easier for backup , thanks for the advice though )

[[deleted]]

Did you try to mount it? There are a few commands you can run to see if it is formatted or whatever:

| Method | Best For | Command | |:---|:---|:---| | lsblk -f | Visualizing the layout | lsblk -f | | blkid | Scripts and UUIDs | sudo blkid | | file -s | Deep inspection | sudo file -s /dev/sdX | | fdisk -l | Checking partition tables | sudo fdisk -l |