External HDD became not visible in the file manager, after formatting

I'm running LUbuntu 18.04.5. The filemanager is PCManFM.

Via the GUI of the Gnome 'Disks' accessory, I formatted a (till then) good, working external HDD, a 2TB WD 'My Passport', with the intention of having a clean, uncorrupted external HDD to which I could then attempt to backup my Home folder via the GUI of the Duplicity Deja-Dup ('Backups') accessory.

When I formatted the HDD via the GUI for Disks, I selected 'Don't overwrite existing data (Quick)', and I selected 'No Partitioning (Empty)'.

After the formatting procedure, the external HDD is still shown in the GUI of the Disks utility, but it is not shown in the GUI of the file manager, which is PCManFM.

If you offer a solution please make it explicit, step-by-step, whether involving GUI (preferable to me) or Terminal. (For example, I do not know how to move between directories in Terminal).

Solution 1:

From the comments...

The 2TB HDD should have a GPT partition table. You'll need to create an ext4 partition on the drive and then PCManFM will see it and allow a backup. You don't need to dedicate the ENTIRE 2TB drive for backup... so you can create multiple partitions, depending on your needs.

Update #1:

The reason to create multiple partitions on your 2TB drive, is to allow other uses of the drive... for example...

• You have a dual-boot configuration with Windows, and you wish to share files between Windows and Ubuntu. You'd create a NTFS partition.

• You have lots of music/picture/video files, so you create an ext4 partition to hold all of those.

• You have a file/music server running on your computer, and you wish to create a partition to share out those files to the network.