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
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yah thats good for understand………
i have 48TB storage server in raid 5, how do i format this server?
to format the corresponding hdd you need a RAM(Random Access Memory) 1 YB(yota byte)
1YB=1024 ZB
1ZB=1024 XB
1XB=1024 PB
1PB=1024 TB
That’s retarded.
LOL, I’ve got 1 UB (UnniByte) RAM on my Server
1UB=1024YB
1YB=1024 ZB
1ZB=1024 XB
1XB=1024 PB
1PB=1024 TB
Is it possible to format my 1.4 MB floppy now?
I have 90’90 power of per zylions! So what? You’ve only got a pint of milk!!! does your processor register ????
Aniket,
Use LVM directly or read this tutorial which explains how to create partition larger than 2TB
How do I format a harddisk using linux system call
hi,
thank you fro valuable information
how to format a disk by cpp programe?is there any sample code ?
Hi,
Thank you very much this valuable information.
Regards,
Nagarajan.S.G
/dev/sdb1 /disk1 ext3 defaults 1 2
The above line what is mean by defaults and what is 1 2 ?
can u explain those two things !
This is directly from the arch linux (amazing) documentation:
Thanks bjaanes
IN my system both WINDOWS-XP and LINUX , I’ve installed. after that
I want to format the linux OS from my system.
so please send to me tricks or method on Email addr., so i can remove LUNUX OS from my system.
BY both method (i)Text command and
(ii)without Text command.
Hey man I also have same problem .did u got any methods to remove . please help man
verrrrrrrrry useful i’ve searched for 2 days for this thanks
Hi,
Thank you very much this valuable information. Very useful this
Thanks
B. Sathish.
I have installed CentOS ..
now i want my disk to be fully formatted like a new one. with no files on it..
i remember doing it by booting in DOS mode in Win98..
Please tell how can i do it..
Thank you.
nice and clear.
Excellent and easy. Thanx
Nice information and esp. the link that you posted for Anikat. Information really useful pal. Thanks a ton..
Regards
Charanjit Singh Cheema
Thank you, this is the kind of fast reference that one is always looking for
Well, this saved me an hour of banging my head against the wall… well written! thanks!
Yes. Very useful. Thanks.
help me to see the out put of the php programe, i have php 2007 developer
god bless you
Very simple and useful, thanks :)
Great. Searched for a long time to find this, very well done. Thanks!
Can any one tell me what the mean by 1,2 in default and when i create a raid partition is there any change in default charcter or it is sama as ” default” .
IN my Laptop both WINDOWS-XP and LINUX, i’ve safe the problem in windows hal.dll file is corrupted.
so please send to me tricks or method on Email addr.
Good Recipe for what I did in UNIX for years with the simple format command.
You boiled it down to an excellent example…
very helpfull , thanks.
very first command (fdisk /dev/sdb) failed. message is “Unable to open /dev/sdb”. any suggestions?
Hello all,
Is there any software to bound two NIC to use on ip address for both NICs.
Thanks
See our tutorial for more info.
Thank you very much these are very good and easy way commands to understand for the people.
how to format linex form my system plz reply solution at my email
thanks alot ,,,,, that was really usefull
how many formatting for window and linux
plz sand ams on my email address
I deleted the panel in ubuntu by mistake.. how can i get the default panels?
The above steps are so good and easy to format
Thank u Very much for your Formating steps.
a very nice article. thank you for sharing.
how do installed linux …. with command ???? tell me all command…????
IN my system both WINDOWS-XP and LINUX , I’ve installed. after that
I want to format the linux OS from my system.
so please send to me tricks or method on Email addr., so i can remove LUNUX OS from my system.
BY both method (i)Text command and
(ii)without Text command.
Good article.
Note: this works on centos 5.5 … fyi.
This is beautiful!!! There are some who care out there..
IN my system both WINDOWS-XP and LINUX , I’ve installed. after that
I want to format the linux OS from my system.
so please send to me tricks or method on Email addr., so i can remove LUNUX OS from my system.
BY both method
(i)Text command and
(ii)without Text command.
Hi Naren…I need to format my linux suse10.3 from my system.Will you please help me how to do.i am very new to this linux.If u have any tricks means please send me that files also.Aravind
Thank you
Good tuto, thank you
very good solution thanks…
Very Good solution.
Thanks
just wanted to let you know you just saved my life, cheers mate
Vivek Gite U R GREAT
MY HDD WAS DETCTED BUT WAS NOT BOOTING AND WAS ALSO DENYING FRESH INSTALLATION OF WINDOWS AND WAS RETURNING SOME STOP ERROR …. BUT AFTER FORMATING ONE OF MY PARTITION IN SLAX NOW EVERYTHING IS BACK TO NORMAL AND IT ALSO SAVED MY TONNES OF DATA
I am using VMWare version 8 to run backtrack 5 and I added another hard drive to it. How do I format the drive to place a rainbow table on the said drive?
Very good and concise tutorial, thank you.
HI,
I have a FS created with the below cmd and started using fine.
mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1
(/dev/sdb1 been allocated from SAN with 1 TB capacity)
Now, I have resized the disk /dev/sdb1 to 2 TB from the SAN. After this my filesystem doesn’t show the resized capacity of 2 TB :(, it still shows as 1 TB. What has to be done to get the FS space resized without data loss ?
Please help with this.
Thank you.
Cheers,
Vicky
Very clear & complete. Keep it up..!
hi
I have 640GB. how to format this hard disk for Linux operating system?
Please help me solution…..
I think you make a wrong typing in mkfs. In the line is hdb not sdb. ok?
I have 1.60GB. how to format this hard disk of Linux OS System. I have try but disk not detected for formatting. I want to OS Windows
Please help me solution…..
thank to much sir
Written in a clear and simple!!
Thank you :)
I am extremely techie challenged :( I do not know what kind of linux I have on my laptop. All I want to do is format my USB drive but I receive an error message.
Sorry, could not display all the contents of “THE GALILEO”: Error when getting information for file ‘/media/sarah/THE GALILEO/FOUND.000’: Input/output error
Easy way to correct and format?
Thanks!!!
could you tell me about how install linux in pc step by step?
U ttract from teh very stupid peeple.
Canopener u tell me hot to format my hippocampus with using dd from commander lion?
I tired “# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hippo1”
but a large aminal dieded instead.
God blast you and tanks
thank you so much for share this Document and when I saw it make me clear for do my assignment.
Thank you
Simple and clear. thank you!
Excellent thank you so much.
I have some read errors that are causing the log tree to fail to recover. The HD seems to function but I have been unsuccessful at repairing or reinstalling Opensuse OS. I keep finding commands to try but when I try them I get “command not found”. Finally I thought I would reformat but I can’t even get the fdisk commands described here to work either. What do I do?
where should i go ? because im looking the step by step reformat of ebondo?linux?
Very useful, thanks!!