Before you try out either of the utilities, make sure you have the following:

• A system with a mainstream Linux distribution.
• You have a user account with sudo or root permissions for administrative tasks.

Option #1: Use the parted Utility to Partition a Disk

GNU parted (Partition Editor) is a popular disk partitioning utility that’s usually present in many Linux distributions. We recommend the following steps to partition a disk in Linux with the parted utility.

Step #1: List Available Storage Devices & Partitions

Start by listing all the current storage devices and their partitions to identify which one you wish to partition. Execute this command with sudo privileges to see a list of storage devices and current partitions:

# sudo parted -l

This will display information for each storage device, including:

• Model: The make of the storage device.
• Disk: The device identifier and its total capacity.
• Sector size: The logical and physical sector sizes are different from the disk’s free space.
• Partition Table: The format of the partition table, which could be one of several types, such as msdos, gpt, and others.
• Disk Flags: Any specific flags set for the disk’s partitions, detailing their size, disk type, filesystem, and other attributes.

Note that partitions in a Linux environment can be one of these types:

• Primary: These partitions typically contain operating system files. A maximum of four primary partitions is allowed.
• Extended: This type allows the creation of more than four partitions on a single disk.
• Logical: These are partitions within an extended partition.

Typically, the primary storage disk (labeled as dev/sda or dev/vda) houses the operating system. Attempting to partition this disk could render your system unbootable. It’s safer to perform partitioning tasks on additional storage disks, such as dev/sdb, dev/sdc, dev/vdb, or dev/vdc, to avoid disrupting your system’s functionality.

Step #2: Access the Target Storage Device 

To begin partitioning, you need to access the storage disk you identified for partitioning in the previous step. Now, run the parted command with the device’s name:

# sudo parted /dev/sda

Always specify the storage device you intend to work with when using parted. If you omit the disk name, the utility may select a disk at random, which could lead to unintended changes and potential data loss.

However, you can switch to the intended device with the select command. For instance, we used the following command to switch to the /dev/sda disk:

(parted) select /dev/sda

Now you can work directly with the /dev/sda disk.

Step #3: Create a Partition Table

Before you proceed with creating partitions, it’s necessary to set up a partition table. This table resides at the beginning of the hard drive and contains information about the dimensions and locations of the partitions.

Linux supports several partition table formats, including aix, amiga, bsd, dvh, gpt, mac, ms-dos, pc98, sun, and loop.

The gpt and msdos are the most frequently utilized types of partition tables. msdos can accommodate up to sixteen partitions and manage disk spaces up to 16TB. On the other hand, gpt can handle disk spaces as large as 9.4ZB and supports up to 128 partitions.

Use the following command syntax to initiate a new partition table:

(parted) mklabel [type_of_partition_table]

For instance, run the following command to set up a gpt partition table:

(parted) mklabel gpt

Confirm your action by typing Yes when prompted to proceed.

Step #4: Verify the Partition Table

Before proceeding to the actual partitioning, inspecting the newly created partition table to confirm the type and disk details is critical. For this, execute the print command.

(parted) print

Step #5: Create the New Partition

Now, we’ll create a new partition with a size of 2000MB, formatted with the ext4 file system. This partition will start at 1MB and extend to 2000MB.

To set up this partition, use the mkpart command:

(parted) mkpart primary ext4 1MB 2000MB

Generally, you won’t see any status message about the success or failure of the process. That’s why we strongly recommend rerunning the print command again to check the details of the partition you’ve just created. Look for the new partition information under the Disk Flags section.

When working with a gpt partition table, it’s essential to note that the partition type actually refers to the name you assign to the partition. For instance, on our test system, the word primary serves as the name for the partition rather than indicating its type.

To finalize your changes and exit the parted utility, simply enter quit. This action will automatically save any modifications you’ve made.

In some cases, you may see the message You may need to update /etc/fstab file. This indicates that the new partition can be set up to mount automatically whenever the system boots. You can make relevant entries in the file to set up automatic mount.

Option #2: Partition a Disk with the fdisk Utility

fdisk has been around since the 1980s. These days, it is part of the Linux kernel utilities (more specifically, the util-linux package). We recommend the following steps to partition a disk in Linux using the fdisk utility.

Step #1: List the Current Partitions

Start by viewing the available disks and partitions with the following command:

# sudo fdisk -l

As you can see, our test system has the following storage drives and partitions.

Step #2: Choose the Target Disk

Identify and select the storage disk where you intend to create new partitions. Next, invoke the fdisk utility with the following command:

# sudo fdisk /dev/sda

This command will line up the /dev/sda for partitioning.

Step #3: Initiate the New Partition

We can now start working on creating the partition. This process has the following steps:

1. Start the process by entering the n command (which stands for new partition).
2. When prompted to choose a partition number, you can simply press Enter to accept the default value suggested (for example, 2).
3. Next, you’ll be asked to specify the starting and ending sectors for the partition. It’s usually safe to go with the default values provided by the utility, which you can accept by pressing Enter.
4. Finally, you’ll decide on the size of the new partition. You have the flexibility to specify this in sectors, megabytes (M), or gigabytes (G). To create a 2GB partition, for instance, you would type +2G.

Upon completion, you’ll see a confirmation message indicating that the new partition has been successfully created.

Step #4: Save Changes to the Disk

Note that while the partition has been created, the modifications have not yet been applied to the disk.

We recommend the w (write) command to permanently write these changes to the disk:

w

This action will save the changes you’ve made to the disk.

After writing the partition details, we recommend confirming that the partition was successfully created and the information written on the disk. For this, execute the following command:

# sudo fdisk -l

This will list all partitions, and you should be able to see the newly created partition (/dev/sda2) in the output, indicating that your partitioning was successful.

Format the Partition

After successfully creating a partition using either the parted or fdisk, the next step is to format it to prepare it for use.

We recommend the ext4 filesystem to format the newly created partition with the following mkfs command:

#sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sda1

This command initializes the partition at /dev/sda1 with the ext4 filesystem, making it ready to store data. Formatting disk partitions is a critical step in using the disk partitions.

Mount the Partition

To start using the new disk space, you’ll need to establish a mount point and attach the partition to it.

First, create a directory to serve as your mount point with the mkdir command:

# sudo mkdir -p /mnt/sda1

Next, mount the partition to this newly created directory by executing the following command:

# sudo mount -t auto /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1

The terminal typically won’t display any status message. So, you need to confirm that the partition is indeed mounted with the following df command that lists all mounted filesystems, including your newly mounted partition:

# df -hT

Here is the output of the command on our test system: The Linux mount command is versatile and you can use it for more than simply mounting partitions.