I converted a Windows system to Ubuntu. I had two disk drives; one is 0.5 TB; this is one on which I installed Ubuntu. The other, a 2TB drive, was formatted as NTFS from Windows and was not involved in the Ubuntu installation. It was named DATA when I looked at the file system. I discovered that Ubuntu has no defragging capability for disk drives, as it is not needed for drives in Linux format, so I decided to reformat the large drive. In doing so (using DISKS) I neglected to specify a name so I ended up with the name of “2.0 TB Volume.” Thinking if I reformatted the drive with the correct name of “DATA,” all would be well. Not so. Now I have two drives listed, one as /dev/sda named DATA and one as /dev/sda2 with the longer name. The question: how do I get rid the the volume with the longer name as they both refer to only one actual drive. There is nothing on the drive right now, no nothing much can hurt it. I just want one want name, DATA.
Well, I looked at this a little more, and I caused more damage than I thought. What I had actually done is somehow create two partitions on the same physical drive … and in trying to fix that issue I’ve managed to create the situation where Ubuntu doesn’t see this disk at all any longer. So is there a way to get this disk back, all formatted as one partition on the disk?
I have recategorized your post and added a relevant tag. Please note that using the correct category and tags will help others find your topic and offer support.
If I understood correctly, you now have Ubuntu successfully installed but the second disk has some issues?
From within the working Ubuntu install open a terminal and post the output of this command: sudo fdisk -l
No, sda is the physical hard drive while sda2 refers to a partition on that hard drive and I would expect there to be and sda1, maybe. Post the fdisk output to give information for others to help.
It’s not reformatting it is naming or giving a ‘label’ to the partition (sda2) not the physical drive (sda).
However, to all, I finally resolved my problem through multiple re-installations of 24.04 and changes to the partitions chosen for the install process. I am now finally able to use my 2TB drive as data storage. Thanks to all for help.
