= Partition a drive with GNU parted
:Author: Seth Kenlon
:Email:
[email protected]
In the 21st century, we tend to take data storage more or less for granted.
We have lots of it, it's relatively affordable, and there are many different kinds of storage we can use.
No matter how much cloud storage space you're given for free, though, there's nothing quite like having a physical hard drive for your really important (or really big, when you live on a slow network) data.
However, few hard drives are sold right off the shelf ready to use, at least in an ideal configuration.
Whether you're buying a new drive or setting up a system with a different configuration, you need to know how to partition a drive on Linux.
This article demonstrates GNU Parted, one of the best tools for partitioning drives.
If you prefer to use a graphical application instead of a terminal command, then read my
https://opensource.com/article/18/11/partition-format-drive-linux#gui[formatting drives for Linux article].
== Disk labels, partitions, and filesystems
A hard drive doesn't _technically_ require much software to serve as a storage device.
However, using a drive without modern conventions like a partition table and filesystem is difficult, impractical, and unsafe for your data.
For that reason, there are three important concepts you need to know about hard drives:
* A *disk label* or *partition table* is metadata placed at the start of a drive, serving as a queue for the computer reading it what kind of storage is available, and where it's located, on the drive.
* A *partition* is a boundary identifying where a filesystem is located. For instance, if you have a 512 GB drive, you can have a partition on that device taking up the entire drive (512 GB), two partitions that each take 256 GB each, or 3 taking up some other variation of sizes, and so on.
* A *filesystem* is a storage scheme agreed upon by a hard drive and a computer. A computer must need to know how to read a filesystem in order to piece together all the data stored on the drive, and it must know how to write data back to the filesystem so that data integrity is maintained.
The GNU Parted application manages the first two: disk labels and partitions.
Parted has some awareness of filesystems, but it leaves the details of implementing a filesystem to other tools like `mkfs`.
== Locating the drive
Before using GNU Parted, you must be certain where your drive is located on your system.
First, attach the hard drive you want to format to your system, then use the `parted` command to see what's attached to your computer:
[source,bash]
----
$ parted /dev/sda print devices
/dev/sda (2000GB)
/dev/sdb (1000GB)
/dev/sdc (1940MB)
----
The device you most recently attached is given a name _later_ in the alphabet than devices that have already been attached.
In this example, `/dev/sdc` is most likely the drive I just attached.
I can confirm that by its size, because I know that the USB thumb drive I attached is only 2 GB (1940 MB is close enough), compared to the main drives my workstation usually contains, which are terabytes in size.
If you're not sure, then you can get more information about the drive you're guessing is the one you want to partition:
[source,bash]
----
$ parted /dev/sdc print
Model: Yoyodyne Tiny Drive 1.0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 1940MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 2048kB 1024kB BS Bloat Hidden
2 2049kB 1939MB 1937MB FAT16 MyDrive
----
Some drives provide more metadata than others.
This one identifies itself as a drive by Yoyodyne, which is exactly the branding on the physical drive, and furthermore it contains a small hidden partition at the front of the drive with some bloatware, followed by a standard Windows-compatible FAT16 partition.
This is definitely the drive I intend to re-format.
Before continuing, _make sure_ you have identified the correct drive you want to partition.
*Re-partitioning the wrong drive results in lost data.*
For safety, all potentially destructive commands in this article use device */dev/sdX*, which you are unlikely to have on your system.
== Creating a disk label or partition table
In order to create a partition on a drive, the drive must have a disk label.
A disk label is also called a _partition table_, and so Parted accepts either term.
To create a disk label, use the `mklabel` or `mktable` subcommand:
[source,bash]
----
$ parted /dev/sdX mklabel gpt
----
This command creates a *gpt* label at the front of the drive located at */dev/sdX*, erasing any existing label that may exist.
This is a quick process, because all that's being replaced is metadata about partitions.
== Creating a partition
To create a partition on a drive, use the `mkpart` subcommand, followed by an optional name for your partition, followed by the start and end point of the partition.
If you only need one partition on your drive, then the sizing is easy: start at 1 and end at 100%.
Use the `--align opt` option to allow Parted to adjust the position of the partition boundaries for best performance.
[source,bash]
----
$ parted /dev/sdX --align opt \
mkpart example 1 100%
----
View your new partition with the `print` subcommand:
[source,bash]
----
$ parted /dev/sdX print
Model: Yoyodyne Tiny Drive 1.0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdi: 1940MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size
1 1049kB 1939MB 1938MB
----
You don't have to use the whole disk for one partition.
The advantage to a partition is that more than one filesystem can exist on a drive, each without interfering with the other.
When sizing partitions, you can use the `unit` subcommand to set what kind of measurements you want to use.
Parted understands sectors, cylinders, heads, bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, and percentages.
You can also specify what filesystem you intend to use a partition for.
This doesn't create the filesystem, but it does provide metadata that could be useful to you later.
Here's a 50-50 split, one for an XFS filesystem and another for a EXT4 filesystem:
[source,bash]
----
$ parted /dev/sdX --align opt \
mkpart xfs 1 50%
$ parted /dev/sdX --align opt \
mkpart ext4 51% 100%
----
== Naming a partition
In addition to marking what filesystem a partition is for, you can also name each partition.
A partition name is read by some file managers and utilities, and can help you identify drives.
For instance, on my media workstation, I often have several different drives attached, each belonging to a different project.
When creating these drives, I name both the partition and the filesystem so that no matter how I'm looking at my system, the locations with important data are clearly labelled.
To name a partition, you must know its number:
[source,bash]
----
$ parted /dev/sdX print
[...]
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 990MB 989MB xfs example
2 1009MB 1939MB 930MB ext4 noname
----
To name partition 1:
[source,bash]
----
$ parted /dev/sdX name 1 example
$ parted /dev/sdX print
[...]
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 990MB 989MB xfs example
2 1009MB 1939MB 930MB ext4 noname
----
== Create a filesystem
For your drive to be useful, you must create a filesystem in your new partition.
GNU Parted doesn't do that, because it's only a partition manager.
The Linux command to create a filesystem on a drive is `mkfs`, but there are helpful utilities aliased for you to use to create a specific kind of filesystem.
For instance, the `mkfs.ext4` creates an EXT4 filesystem, while `mkfs.xfs` creates an XFS filesystem, and so on.
Your partition is located "in" the drive, so instead of creating a filesystem on `/dev/sdX`, you create your filesystem in `/dev/sdX1` for the first partition, `/dev/sdX2` for the second partition, and so on.
Here's an example of creating an XFS filesystem:
[source,bash]
----
$ sudo mkfs.xfs -L mydrive /dev/sdX1
----
== Download our cheat
Parted is a flexible and powerful command.
You can issue it commands, as demonstrated in this article, or activate an interactive mode so you're constantly "connected" to a drive you specify:
[source,bash]
----
$ parted /dev/sdX
(parted) print
[...]
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 990MB 989MB xfs example
2 1009MB 1939MB 930MB ext4 noname
(parted) name 1 mydrive
(parted)
----
If you intend to use parted often, LINK-TO-CHEATSHEET[download our GNU Parted cheat sheet] so you have all the subcommands you need close at hand.
