Adding a HDD with data to proxmox

[PeterMarcusH.]

As the title reads, i'm having problems adding a HDD with existing data to proxmox without wiping it first. How do i go about this?
The HDD is visable through the web GUI tab "Disks", under /dev/sda

 

[budy]

You could use wipefs on that device and have it cleaned out. I just had to do that with 24 NVMe devices, which had been part of a former ZPOOL, before being re-purposed for a ceph storage.

 

[PeterMarcusH.]

I dont want the cleaned out. I need the data on them. I wish to add/mount them to proxmox .)

 

[budy]

Okay, care to elaborate on the goal you want to achieve? What kind of data is that? What type of file systems are on the drive? Sou you want to access the data from the proxmox host itself or from a guest on that proxmox host?

 

[PeterMarcusH.]

Its a HDD with movie files on it. I'd like to be able to see it in the web GUI (under storage), so i guess from the proxmox host itself

 

[budy]

Well… not, this is not what the PVE GUI is supposed to show you. It's not a file browser. PVE GUI will show you the contents of local storage, in case you added that drive as one, but only of your're running LVM on it.

…and why should the PVE GUI display any movie anyway? Proxmox is for running virtual machines or Linux containers, nor for displaying media content. That's why I asked, if you maybe wanted to make the device available in a virtual guest…

 

[PeterMarcusH.]

In my previous configuration i had an overview of all my drives in storage. My backup SSD's and my HDDs with data used from other VM's. Why wouldnt i be able to replicate this?

 

[budy]

You're saying that you had a Proxmox VE config, which showed you the contents of arbitrary disks? I wonder, how you did that. Afaik, PVE will only show you configured storages and only if you configure some directory to contain also snippets, you will be able to get it's content listed in the Proxmox UI.

 

[PeterMarcusH.]

I couldnt view the contents of the disk, but i could see how full it was

 

[budy]

Then you should probably mount the file system on it. What filesystem is that?

 

[PeterMarcusH.]

I believe ext4?

 

[budy]

Well… create a mount folder for it and try it:

mkdir /mnt/sdb
mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb

and see, if it shows up in the PVE UI. If yes make this permanent by editing /etc/fstab accordingly.

 

[PeterMarcusH.]

I can see all the files in the mounted folder, which is great! , however i still cant seem to see the disk under storage?

 

[PeterMarcusH.]

I figured it out. Thank you a ton budy! Much love to you

 

[budy]

So… how did you solve it?

 

[PeterMarcusH.]

So… how did you solve it?

Did as you told me. I firstly mounted the HDD and verified the mount from looking into the files in the directory /mnt/sdb. After this i navigated to 'Datacenter' and added a directory as storage as seen in the picture

- I still cant seem to make the mount perminent though. What exactly should be written in fstab?

 

[budy]

Ahh… yes, I did mention that in a post above… great. Mind to set this thread to CLOSED then?

 

[PeterMarcusH.]

Ahh… yes, I did mention that in a post above… great. Mind to set this thread to CLOSED then?

Just before i close it, could you maybe tell me what exactly should be written in fstab?

 

[budy]

Sure, grab the UUID from the output you shared above and insert in into your fstab like this (remeber to adjust the UUID!):

UUID=<UUID of partition> /mnt/sdb                   ext4    defaults        1 2

replace <UUID of partition> with the actual UUID. Then unmount your volume and remount it like this:

umount /mnt/sdb
mount /mnt/sdb

That should mount your volume again and that would ensure that it gets mounted after reboot.

 

[PeterMarcusH.]

Hmm, this doesnt seem to work. What am i doing wrong?