Set Up a USB Drive Under Ubuntu GNU/Linux

(This is an update of these instructions from 2015.) And external USB drive is an easy way to add storage to a desktop PC. With USB 3.0 now standard, data access for backups and video storage is now fast enough.

A recent new drive came with a single large partition covering the entire drive, so no partitioning was necessary.

So the remaining steps are:

Find the new drive, look for a new device:
- ls /dev/sd*
- mount | grep dev
Install the ext4 filesystem (if you are sure that sdbN is your new drive's partition)
- mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdbN
Free up the reserved space (you won't likely need this on a backup/media storage drive)
- tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdbN
Mount it somewhere to test and see the available space
- mount /dev/sdbN /mnt/usbdrive
- df -kh | grep usb

Last modified on 5 Aug 2020 by AO