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. For more information see
Linux partition naming convention and IDE drive mappings.
To partition the disk - /dev/sdb, enter:# fdisk /dev/sdb
The basic fdisk commands you need are:
- 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
Append as follows:
/dev/sdb1 /disk1 ext3 defaults 1 2
Save and close the file.
Task: Label the partition
You can label the partition using e2label. For example, if you want to label the new partition /backup, enter# e2label /dev/sdb1 /backup
You can use label name insted of partition name to mount disk using /etc/fstab:LABEL=/backup /disk1 ext3 defaults 1 2