Best Disk Format For Linux

Introduction

Preparing a new disk for use on a Linux system can be quick and easy. There are many tools, filesystem formats, and partitioning schemes that may complicate the process if you have specialized needs, but if you want to get up and running quickly, it's fairly straightforward.

This guide will cover the following process:

• Identifying the new disk on the system.
• Creating a single partition that spans the entire drive (most operating systems expect a partition layout, even if only one filesystem is present)
• Formatting the partition with the Ext4 filesystem (the default in most modern Linux distributions)
• Mounting and setting up Auto-mounting of the filesystem at boot

Install the Tools

To partition the drive, we'll use the parted utility. In most cases, this will already be installed on the server.

If you are on an Ubuntu or Debian server and do not have parted yet, you can install it by typing:

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If you are on a CentOS or Fedora server, you can install it by typing:

Identify the New Disk on the System

• Meaning you can't just do a DD overtop of your running Linux operating system. Instead, you'll need to either unplug the hard drive and put it in another PC or load up a Linux live disk. Assuming you've done one of these two things, here's how to securely erase a hard drive using DD on Linux. Step 1: make sure that the drive isn't.
• GPT format: The parted command can create a Globally Unique Identifiers Partition Table GPT), while fdisk and cfdisk are limited to DOS partition tables. Larger disks: A DOS partition table can format up to 2TB of disk space, although up to 16TB is possible in some cases. However, a GPT partition table can address up to 8ZiB of space.

Before we set up the drive, we need to be able to properly identify it on the server.

If this is a completely new drive, the easiest way to find it on your server may be to look for the absence of a partitioning scheme. If we ask parted to list the partition layout of our disks, it will give us an error for any disks that don't have a valid partition scheme. Bluestacks cant download pubg. This can be used to help us identify the new disk:

You should see an unrecognized disk label error for the new, unpartitioned disk:

You can also use the lsblk command and look for a disk of the correct size that has no associated partitions:

Remember to check lsblk in every session before making changes. The /dev/sd* and /dev/hd* disk identifiers will not necessarily be consistent between boots, which means there is some danger of partitioning or formatting the wrong disk if you do not verify the disk identifier correctly.

Consider using more persistent disk identifiers like /dev/disk/by-uuid, /dev/disk/by-label, or /dev/disk/by-id. See our introduction to storage concepts and terminology in Linux article for more information.

When you know the name the kernel has assigned your disk, you can partition your drive.

Partition the New Drive

As mentioned in the introduction, we'll create a single partition spanning the entire disk in this guide.

Choose a Partitioning Standard

To do this, we first need to specify the partitioning standard we wish to use. GPT is the more modern partitioning standard, while the MBR standard offers wider support among operating systems. If you do not have any special requirements, it is probably better to use GPT at this point.

To choose the GPT standard, pass in the disk you identified like this:

If you wish to use the MBR format, type this instead:

Create the New Partition

Once the format is selected, you can create a partition spanning the entire drive by typing: Battle net pc download.

If we check lsblk, we should see the new partition available:

Create a Filesystem on the New Partition

Now that we have a partition available, we can format it as an Ext4 filesystem. To do this, pass the partition to the mkfs.ext4 utility.

We can add a partition label by passing the -L flag. Select a name that will help you identify this particular drive:

If you want to change the partition label at a later date, you can use the e2label command:

You can see all of the different ways to identify your partition with lsblk. We want to find the name, label, and UUID of the partition.

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Some versions of lsblk will print all of this information if we type:

If your version does not show all of the appropriate fields, you can request them manually:

You should see something like this. The highlighted output indicate different methods you can use to refer to the new filesystem:

Mount the New Filesystem

Now, we can mount the filesystem for use.

The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard recommends using /mnt or a subdirectory under it for temporarily mounted filesystems. It makes no recommendations on where to mount more permanent storage, so you can choose whichever scheme you'd like. For this tutorial, we'll mount the drive under /mnt/data.

Create the directory by typing:

Mounting the Filesystem Temporarily

You can mount the filesystem temporarily by typing:

Mounting the Filesystem Automatically at Boot

If you wish to mount the filesystem automatically each time the server boots, adjust the /etc/fstab file:

Earlier, we issued a sudo lsblk --fs command to display three filesystem identifiers for our filesystem. We can use any of these in this file. We've used the partition label below, but you can see what the lines would look like using the other two identifiers in the commented out lines:

You can learn about the various fields in the /etc/fstab file by typing man fstab. For information about the mount options available for a specific filesystem type, check man [filesystem] (like man ext4). For now, the mount lines above should get you started.

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For SSDs, the discard option is sometimes appended to enable continuous TRIM. There is debate over the performance and integrity impacts of performing continuous TRIM in this manner, and most distributions include method of performing periodic TRIM as an alternative.

Save and close the file when you are finished.

If you did not mount the filesystem previously, you can now mount it by typing:

Testing the Mount

After we've mounted the volume, we should check to make sure that the filesystem is accessible.

We can check if the the disk is available in the output from the df command:

You should also be able to see a lost+found directory within the /mnt/data directory, which typically indicates the root of an Ext* filesystem:

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We can also check that the file mounted with read and write capabilities by writing to a test file:

Read the file back just to make sure the write executed correctly:

You can remove the file after you have verified that the new filesystem is functioning correctly:

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Conclusion

Format In Linux

Your new drive should now be partitioned, formatted, mounted, and ready for use. This is the general process you can use turn a raw disk into a filesystem that Linux can use for storage. There are more complex methods of partitioning, formatting, and mounting which may be more appropriate in some cases, but the above is a good starting point for general use.