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. 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