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Hi guys,
Apologies for the newb question but I can't for the life of me remember how I did this last time.

I have a brand new media hard drive I want to use to store my media. This time around I am installing the OS on a flash drive, and using the internal HDD purely for media (it is also a larger drive as my current one is full). My question is, do I need to format this new drive at all? If so, can anyone direct me to a simple guide, or provide the steps for a beginner on how to do this, what type of format to select, etc.

I have access to a Ubuntu Live Disk, I could also try using something like Parted Magic Live CD. If there are any steps i should know about, please share them.

Your help will save me alot of time. Thank you in advance.

Install the OS on the flash drive. Boot the machine. Work out what device name is given to the big drive, if you have 2 drives (the flash and the data drive) one will /dev/sda and one will be /dev/sdb. You can work out which is what by running


Lets assume for the rest of this that the data disk is /dev/sdb. If it isn't, adjust accordingly.

Install gparted.

Then run it as root


Partition the disk - MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT ONE!! - it can all be one big partition or you can divide it up if you want multi partitions. I am pretty sure gparted allows you to format as well as partition. I'll assume one partition which will be /dev/sdb1.

ext4 is a reasonable filesystem.

Then make a place to mount it, and add the place to /etc/fstab


Now when we get to fstab we want to use UUIDs not device names, becasue device names can change.

will get you the UUID for /dev/sdb1

Then add this line to /etc/fstab

Thanks Nickr!

From Step1 onward:

Code:
sudo fdisk -l

Is this doable in OpenElec? That is the only OS I have installed on my xbmc box. My other computer runs windows, and i assumed it is from there that i could use a live disk to prepare the disk. Is that incorrect?

I am not sure whether i is possible in openelec. You'd probably need to use the commandline tool fdisk or cfdisk rather than gparted.

No fdisk in Openelec to my knowledge. Booting into Ubuntu from your live disc should give you a working environment that allows you to follow the instructions.