How to partition and format a drive with GNU Parted

Easy as pie :)

First we need parted itself, if we don’t have it yet: apt-get install parted

Next we need to know which disk we’re going to work with. You can list the disks in the system with parted -l. Its output will look something like this:

$ sudo parted -l
Model: ATA ST33000650NS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 3001GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
 5      1049kB  2097kB  1049kB                     bios_grub
 1      2097kB  34.4GB  34.4GB                     raid
 2      34.4GB  34.9GB  537MB                      raid
 3      34.9GB  1134GB  1100GB                     raid
 4      1134GB  3001GB  1866GB                     raid


Model: ATA ST33000650NS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 3001GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
 5      1049kB  2097kB  1049kB                     bios_grub
 1      2097kB  34.4GB  34.4GB                     raid
 2      34.4GB  34.9GB  537MB                      raid
 3      34.9GB  1134GB  1100GB                     raid
 4      1134GB  3001GB  1866GB                     raid

In the example we see two disks, /dev/sda and /dev/sdb, along with their partitions.

Let’s say we need to repartition and format /dev/sdb. Here’s what we do:

sudo parted /dev/sdb
(parted) mklabel gpt or (parted) mklabel msdos
(parted) mkpartfs primary ext4 0% 100%
(parted) quit

Done. The disk is partitioned and formatted.

A few notes. mklabel gpt sets the partition table format. If you don’t know what that is, either read the docs or just use gpt or msdos. You can also take a hint from the partition table format of the disks already in your system. In my parted -l output above both disks use gpt.

mkpartfs primary ext4 0% 100% creates a partition with the ext4 file system, gives it 100% of the space and formats it right away. You can use mkpart instead of mkpartfs, in which case you can format the partition later.

For more details on parted commands and features, see the official documentation or man parted.

Important! Do all of this on an unmounted disk! If the disk is new to the system, don’t forget to mount it and add it to /etc/fstab.

You can find the UUID of every partition on every disk with blkid.