19.3. Adding Disks
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## 19.3. Adding Disks

Originally contributed by David O'Brien.

This section describes how to add a new SATA disk to a machine that currently only has a single drive. First, turn off the computer and install the drive in the computer following the instructions of the computer, controller, and drive manufacturers. Reboot the system and become `root`.

Inspect `/var/run/dmesg.boot` to ensure the new disk was found. In this example, the newly added SATA drive will appear as `ada1`.

For this example, a single large partition will be created on the new disk. The GPT partitioning scheme will be used in preference to the older and less versatile MBR scheme.

### Note:

If the disk to be added is not blank, old partition information can be removed with `gpart delete`. See gpart(8) for details.

The partition scheme is created, and then a single partition is added:

`#` `gpart create -s GPT ada1` `#` `gpart add -t freebsd-ufs ada1`

Depending on use, several smaller partitions may be desired. See gpart(8) for options to create partitions smaller than a whole disk.

A file system is created on the new blank disk:

`#` `newfs -U /dev/ada1p1`

An empty directory is created as a mountpoint, a location for mounting the new disk in the original disk's file system:

`#` `mkdir /newdisk`

Finally, an entry is added to `/etc/fstab` so the new disk will be mounted automatically at startup:

/dev/ada1p1 /newdisk ufs rw 2 2

The new disk can be mounted manually, without restarting the system:

`#` `mount /newdisk`

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