Disk Thing II - The Solution

Remember last time I was stuck on an error:

/dev/hdd1: Invalid argument passed to ext2 library while setting up superblock

I looked up the error in Google. Didn't find any direct help, but I did find another link explaining how to add a new drive:
Partitioning and Formatting a New Drive

In this post, the author creates a primary partition instead of an extended one as I did. After rerunning fdisk with this new information, the format went just fine. below are the corrected instructions:

First, partition the drive. This will erase any data on the disk.

Partition the disk using fdisk

fdisk /dev/hdd

Delete the existing partition

Command: d

Add a new partition

Command: n

Make it PRIMARY

Command action p

Specify the first partition

Partition number (1-4): 1

Start with the first cylinder

First cylinder (1-xxxx, default=1): [enter]

Use them all

Last cylinder (default=xxxx): [enter]

View the results

Command: p

Write the partition table and exit (no undo!)

Command: w

Now, format the drive using ext3.

Issue format command

mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hdd1

The format worked great.

Now let's mount this sucker.

Make a directory for the mount (mine was already there)

mkdir /mnt/hdd1

Add this line to /etc/fstab

/dev/hdd1 /mnt/hdd1 ext3 defaults 0 0

Test the mount

mount /dev/hdd1

Check the results

df

If everything worked, you should see your new drive in the output:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1

                      6.8G  1.6G  5.0G  24% /

/dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0/part1

                       74G   33M   70G   1% /mnt/hdd1

Next time, the new directory layout.