Comments on: FreeBSD: How To Add A Second Hard Disk

By: Franklin

Franklin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:01:57 +0000

Thanks for this.. You are a life saver! FreeBSD has a steep learning curve when most of your experience is with RedHat.

By: musang

musang — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 01:24:57 +0000

install FBSD 8.2 release, try sysinstall, but something prevent me from formating 2nd harddisk. better address this issue.

By: Marius van Witzenburg

Marius van Witzenburg — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:42:26 +0000

You could do:

cp -a /usr/* /usr0/

This would be the same as defining -RpP.

By: Olli Kaven

Olli Kaven — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 12:43:45 +0000

Thanks for the great article. Worked fine with FreeBSD 8.0.

By: Paul Webster

Paul Webster — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:09:21 +0000

make that ‘cp -RpP /usr/* /usr0/’

By: Paul Webster

Paul Webster — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:50:38 +0000

Joe Poniatowsk, To move /usr to another partition.

First thing to do is put the new disk in the system, once this is completed boot from the installation cd (any of them) use sysinstall to create a directory called /usr0 on that disk. dont use ‘q’ use ‘w’ at every stage, then reboot the system do not install.

when the system reboots choose to go to single usermode, do the following:

mount -w /
mount -r /usr
mkdir /usr0
mount -w /dev/ /usr0

Now you just need to copy your /usr to /usr0 preserving partitions!

cp -rpP /usr/* /usr0/

now just alter fstab to use the new drive for /usr (the one that is currently mounted as /usr0) and wallah. reboot

By: nexus

nexus — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:37:01 +0000

Loved this article, actually used it to for a local computer meeting dealing with this exact issue. Worked out like a charm.

By: Vivek Gite

Vivek Gite — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:27:16 +0000

There is no easy solution to your problem. Vinum could have saved your time, if it was implemented in first place.

By: Joe Poniatowski

Joe Poniatowski — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:01:46 +0000

Great info. Now I want to move an existing partition like /usr to the new drive. I could copy everything from the existing /usr to the new partition, then delete it and create a symbolic link to the new location. But is there a better way?

By: Roland

Roland — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:55:13 +0000

Thank you!!!! I just started changing my servers to run FreeBSD and tutorials like these are the reason why. This was awesome.

By: James

James — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:19:33 +0000

Hey thanks for this write up, all went exactly as you have explained. I am left with one question. I would like to be able to access my new drive /disk2 via ftp. I tried to symbolically link a directory I created on new drive to my home folder. Error said too many levels of symbolic links. Should I just change mount mount to a new directory within my home directory. Ex. Home2. Sorry for newb question but thank you for this tutorial.