Linux Hard Disk Format Command

Q. I’ve installed a new 250GB SATA hard disk on our office CentOS Linux server. How do I format a hard disk under Linux operating system from a shell prompt?

A. There are total 4 steps involved for hard disk upgrade and installation procedure:

Step #1 : Partition the new disk using fdisk command

Following command will list all detected hard disks:

# fdisk -l | grep '^Disk'

Output:

Disk /dev/sda: 251.0 GB, 251000193024 bytes
Disk /dev/sdb: 251.0 GB, 251000193024 bytes

A device name refers to the entire hard disk. To partition the disk – /dev/sdb, enter:

# fdisk /dev/sdb

The basic fdisk commands you need are:

Output:

  • m – print help
  • p – print the partition table
  • n – create a new partition
  • d – delete a partition
  • q – quit without saving changes
  • w – write the new partition table and exit

Step#2 : Format the new disk using mkfs.ext3 command
To format Linux partitions using ext2fs on the new disk:

# mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1

Step#3 : Mount the new disk using mount command
First create a mount point /disk1 and use mount command to mount /dev/sdb1, enter:

# mkdir /disk1
# mount /dev/sdb1 /disk1
# df -H

Step#4 : Update /etc/fstab file
Open /etc/fstab file, enter:

# vi /etc/fstab

# blkid /dev/sdb1

Mounting-of-additional-hard-disks-in-Linux-8

The part after "UUID=" is the UUID of our partition. We copy it (without the quotation marks) and open /etc/fstabin a text editor:

# nano /etc/fstab  or,  # vi /etc/fstab

With the arrow keys, we navigate our cursor to the end of the file and paste the following line:

UUID=d6ae62ff-c9b7-4a07-aea8-a36f55c5036d       /datastore      ext4    defaults      0       0

Mounting-of-additional-hard-disks-in-Linux-9

Make sure to replace the UUID with your actual one.

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