How to format and mount a blank disk
When you add a new blank disk to your server, you will probably need to do some steps before you can use it.
Table of Contents
- Creating partition
- Formatting and labelling the partition
- Mount the partition
- Mounting partition automatically when system boots up
Creating partition
- List all available disks and its partitions with
lsblk
, look for your blank disk and note its name (in this case,vdb
).$ lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT loop0 7:0 0 55.4M 1 loop /snap/core18/1944 loop1 7:1 0 31.1M 1 loop /snap/snapd/10707 loop2 7:2 0 69.9M 1 loop /snap/lxd/19188 loop3 7:3 0 32.3M 1 loop /snap/snapd/12704 loop4 7:4 0 55.4M 1 loop /snap/core18/2128 sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom vda 252:0 0 20G 0 disk ├─vda1 252:1 0 1M 0 part ├─vda2 252:2 0 1G 0 part /boot └─vda3 252:3 0 19G 0 part └─ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv 253:0 0 19G 0 lvm / vdb 252:16 0 10G 0 disk
- We are going to use
fdisk
to create a new partition onvdb
. Typefdisk /dev/
+ your disk name.sudo fdisk /dev/vdb
fdisk
allows you to do several tasks (you can typem
to see every option) but now you are only going to create a new partition. Typen
and press Enter.- If you want to create one partition that fills up entire disk, simply press Enter to all prompts.
Command (m for help): n Partition type p primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free) e extended (container for logical partitions) Select (default p):
Using default response p. Partition number (1-4, default 1): First sector (2048-20971519, default 2048): Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-20971519, default 20971519):
Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 10 GiB.
- Type
w
and press Enter to save the changes. - If you type
lsblk
again you will notice there is a new partition on your disk (in this case,vdb1
). You will need this name for the next step.
Formatting and labelling the partition
- Format the new partition to
ext4
(default format for Linux systems) by typing:sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/vdb1
Replace partition name for yours.
- You can label the partition with
e2label
:sudo e2label /dev/vdb1 "New partition"
- For NTFS partitions, use
ntfslabel
.
- For NTFS partitions, use
Mount the partition
- Now you can mount your formatted partition. First, create a folder where you will mount the partition. Mount points are usually created under
/mnt
or/media
folder, but you can use any other path.sudo mkdir /mnt/mydisk
- Finally, mount the disk partition.
sudo mount /dev/vdb1 /mnt/mydisk
- When you want to unmount, simply type
sudo umount
+ mount point or partition path.sudo umount /mnt/mydisk #or sudo umount /dev/vdb1
Mounting partition automatically when system boots up
- If you want your disk partition automatically mounts when system boots up, you will need to edit
/etc/fstab
file. First, note filesystem UUID by typing:$ sudo blkid /dev/vdb1: UUID="14bf9ffc-708c-4cf8-b7b2-7a5fb205a6d0" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="0a77ac42-01"
- You can also type
lsblk -o name,uuid
.
- You can also type
- Open
/etc/fstab
with your preferred text editor.sudo vim /etc/fstab
- At the end of the file, type this (using your UUID and mount point):
UUID=14bf9ffc-708c-4cf8-b7b2-7a5fb205a6d0 /mnt/mydisk ext4 defaults 0 0
- Save changes and close the file.
- You can check if everything works as expected, typing
sudo mount -a
(first unmount the partition if it’s mounted) and checking if partition is mounted. - Next time you boot up your system, disk partition will be automatically mounted.
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