How to Format my Second HDD

[Artim]

My computer has two HDDs. The first is a Linux drive with LL5.4, with separate "/" and "/home" partitions and a swap space.
The second, "dev/sdb," is a dos disk I don't have access to (or don't know how to access).


I want to use that second one to store Timeshift restore points and an iso of my existing system (made with Systemback). But I can't write to the drive until it is formatted from dos to ext4 or something Linux can use.


How can I access and format that second hard drive?


Sorry for the "rookie question," but I'm stumped.

[stevef]

Have you looked at the tools on Linux Lite.

Menu->System->Partition Drives should open the disk tool gparted.

Carefully select your dos disk then queue up the actions necessary to refomat it to ext4.

OR

Menu->Settings->Disks should open Disk Utility GUI which can also do what you want.  Again, make sure you are working on the correct disk before applying changes.

Disks is a little more friendly perhaps.  You can also use it to set mount options so the second disk is auto-mounted on boot with a name etc.

[Artim]

Done!

All it was, was that I simply missed the drop-down menu in the top-right corner of GParted, which lists the drives. DUH.

Selected dev.sdb and created a new partition named "/data" and copied my stuff to it. Thanks!