This section describes how to add a new SATA disk to a machine that currently only has a single drive. First, turn off the computer and install the drive in the computer following the instructions of the computer, controller, and drive manufacturers. Reboot the system and become root.

Inspect /var/run/dmesg.boot to ensure the new disk was found. In this example, the newly added SATA drive will appear as ada1.

For this example, a single large partition will be created on the new disk. The GPT partitioning scheme will be used in preference to the older and less versatile MBR scheme.

The partition scheme is created, and then a single partition is added:

Depending on use, several smaller partitions may be desired. See gpart(8) for options to create partitions smaller than a whole disk.

A file system is created on the new blank disk:

An empty directory is created as a mountpoint, a location for mounting the new disk in the original disk's file system:

Finally, an entry is added to /etc/fstab so the new disk will be mounted automatically at startup:

The new disk can be mounted manually, without restarting the system: