You can use external USB drive with Skynet. Here is how to access its data.
Step 1. Don’t Plug in the Drive Yet
Start by running fdisk to list the currently mounted file systems.
% sudo fdisk -l
You will compare this output from fdisk with its output after you plug in the drive.
Step 2. Plug in the Drive
Step 3. Run fdisk Again
Run the fdisk command again.
% sudo fdisk -l
Compare this output from fdisk with prior run’s output. The difference will be your USB drive. It will include lines like
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/xyz * 64 1220940063 588792704 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
The last line gives you the device name /dev/xyz.
Step 4 (Optional). Reformat the Drive with a Linux Filesystem
If this is a new drive, and you don’t need to access it under Windows, then you can reformat it with a modern Linux filesystem. The command below will reformat your USB drive with the ext3 file system. Use the device name from Step 3 instead of /dev/xyz. Warning: Be sure that you properly identified the device name of your USB drive. This is not the time to guess! An incorrect guess will destroy whatever file system you list for /dev/xyz. If necessary, go over the output from Steps 1 and 3 again to be sure.
% sudo mkfs -t ext3 /dev/xyz
Step 5. Create a Mount Point
Run these commands to create an empty directory. You will be accessing the USB drive later as /mnt/my_filesystem_name.
% cd /mnt % sudo mkdir my_filesystem_name
Step 6. Add the New Filesystem to /etc/fstab
Edit /etc/fstab
% sudo vi /etc/fstab
Add a line like this. Use the device name from Step 3 instead of /dev/xyz. Use the Mount Point from Step 4 instead of /mnt/my_filesystem_name/. Also, if you reformatted the drive, use the actual file system type from Step 4 instead of ntfs (such as ext3).
/dev/xyz /mnt/my_filesystem_name/ ntfs defaults 0 0
Step 7. Mount the Drive
This command will look through /etc/fstab and mount the USB drive.
% sudo mount -a
Step 8. Fix Access Protections
Confirm that the access protections are as desired and fix if necessary.
% cd /mnt % ls -l % sudo chmod 755 my_filesystem_name