Adding & Formatting a New Drive Under CentOS [StartupCTO]

Last Updated: 22 Oct 2026

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Author: 216.244.66.236

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= Adding & Formatting a New Drive Under CentOS =

I always have trouble remembering the magic set of incantations required to add a new drive in CentOS... particularly without rebooting.

Here's what I usually do. Note this makes some assumptions:

* You want to use LVM so you can expand/contract the size of the disk later.
* You want use XFS for your filesystem

== Adding the Disk ==

1. First, add the disk itself. You're probably using VMWare or something, so you can do this via the VMWare admin interface.

2. Either reboot so the machine sees the disk, or scan the SCSI busses:

''# tail -f /var/log/messages''

''# echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan''

If you don't see the disk from the first bus, you may need to scan the others:

''# echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host1/scan''

''# echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host2/scan''

Eventually the disk should show up in /var/log/messages. Let's assume it is ''/dev/sdb''

3. Create the physical volume:

''# pvcreate /dev/sdb''

4. Create the volume group ('mysql' in this case):

''vgcreate mysql /dev/sdb''

5. Create the logical volume ('data'):

''# lvcreate -l 100%VG -n data mysql''

== Formatting & Mounting the Disk ==

6. Make the XFS filesystem:

''# mkfs.xfs /dev/mapper/mysql-data''

7. Make the mountpoint:

''# mkdir /data''

8. Mount the drive:

''# mount /dev/mapper/mysql-data /data''

9. If you want the drive to mount at boot, add an entry in ''/etc/fstab''

You're done. If you want to see if your new drive is online, check ''df -h'' and you should see it.

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