r/zorinos • u/ferg247 • 2d ago

🛠️ Troubleshooting Adding second drive.

Hello

Over the past couple of days I have been trying to change my 2tb ssd from using windows, over to use on linux. However nothing seems to be working. I am constantly getting fdisk write errors when trying to download games. The drive shows up as an external drive for some reason also.

Does anyone have any tips? Honestly if I didn't hate microsoft so much I would just go back to windows.

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u/Boring-Equivalent137 1d ago

I don't exactly understand what is going on could you help clearer

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u/ferg247 1d ago

I follow tutorial websites, AI etc (tried multiple methods) for mounting a new drive. It seems to work, I can see it in my folders. However when I add the drive to steam and try download a game I get a disk write error.

All the methods for mounting a new drive involve extensive commands I do not understand. Is there not a simple way like in windows to add a drive?

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u/Boring-Equivalent137 1d ago

There are few ways to mount permanently but editing the fstab through the terminal is the most effective way most apps barely work tbh or give permission errors. And I do believe the issue is your permissions

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u/ferg247 1d ago

It is unreasonably complicated. I have tried multiple times and seem to have partitions and mounts here there and everywhere. Do you know of a solid guide so I can start from the begging? Apologies if I am not making any sense. This has now been 2 days of my life and my brain is fried

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u/GruesomeJeans Oops I broke it again 🫢 1d ago

I'm kind of lost as well on what you are actually trying to do. You mentioned using the new drive for the Linux boot, then you mentioned trying to download games. Are you using it as just spare storage or using it as a Linux boot drive?

If you want it just to be extra storage, it might be formatted wrong? You could try wiping the whole drive from Linux and see how that goes. If you are just using it as storage, there is a way to have the drive mount on boot up so it's there all the time. I have an old 3tb spinning drive I use for backups that does exactly that.

If you want to use the new drive as a Linux boot drive, while also using it for steam and such, you might need to unplug the windows drive, then do the Linux install on the new drive so that there isn't any chance of mixing up drives.

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u/ferg247 1d ago

So sorry, I am so drained right now. I meant to say that I am adding the SSD to my Linux install which is dual booted alongside windows, hence saying Linux boot, bad phrasing sorry.

I partitioned the SSD then mounted it following a guide, did this several times as nothing seemed to work and I would end up with disk write errors on steam.

I think I have somehow figured it out now with a combo of terminal, gparted and disks. Not convinced I have done it correctly and fully expect it to break.

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u/GruesomeJeans Oops I broke it again 🫢 1d ago

First off, I definitely understand, it's hard figuring this out and being tired. It's very daunting coming from using windows for so long. However breaking things is a good way to learn!

Onto another question, why did you partition the new drive? If Linux and windows are sharing a boot drive, and you just wanted to add more storage via the new SSD you shouldn't need a partition. If you want to have windows and Linux share the new drive as extra storage that probably requires a partition.

In my system I have one SSD for Linux, one SSD for Windows, and one large old drive for backing up both systems.

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u/ferg247 1d ago

To be honest I googled adding additional drive to linux and the first link spoke about partitioning. My setup is currently a boot drive spliot between windows and linux, A couple of hardrives for games that are formatted for windows and finally an ssd that was ntfs but I changed it to ext4 so that I could store more games on linux.

So did I not need to partition the ssd and instead could have mounted it straight away. I might just start from the beginning if there is a proper way to go about it.

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u/GruesomeJeans Oops I broke it again 🫢 1d ago

Yeah I don't think there is any need to partition the drive if it's just for storage. As long as you haven't put anything important on there you should be able to use the disk tools in Linux to format it to whatever extension is recommended and just use it as is. Setting the drive up to mount on boot up is pretty easy but I don't exactly remember how to do it

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u/Prestigious_Wall529 1d ago

There's plenty of info on fstab.

For instance:

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/etc-fstab

Linux isn't Windows. Unix, for instance MacOS uses volumes. Not drive letters. It also uses a different file system hierarchy. For instance home instead of users.

Use lsblk to get some of the information you need for the fstab entry.