Format, and Mount a Disk in Linux - Intermediate

The Below article, will assume that you have one of the following hardware configurations;

1. Stand-Alone Drive which presents itself to the OS as a device name like /dev/sdc
2. RAID Array configured on a RAID device, which presents itself to OS as a device name like /dev/sdc

Use the below command to initiate fdisk for formatting the disk. 

If the disk is over 3TB, and you're running an older version of FDISK, you'll need to use "parted" instead.

root@server:~# fdisk /dev/sdc

Now, we'll have an fdisk shell. We want to print the current disk's information, to see if it's empty. In the example below it's a 480GB SSD Drive:

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdc: 480.1 GB, 480103981056 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 58369 cylinders, total 937703088 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x80ed6cbb

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

We've now confirmed we have the right disk. Now we move towards creating. The commands you need to create a simple full-size partition are included below. (__ denotes "default value - Press Enter")

Command (m for help): n

Partition type:

p primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)

e extended

Select (default p): p

Partition number (1-4, default 1): __

Using default value 1

First sector (2048-937703087, default 2048): __

Using default value 2048

Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-937703087, default 937703087):

Using default value 937703087

Check the partition has shown up correctly:

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdc: 480.1 GB, 480103981056 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 58369 cylinders, total 937703088 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x80ed6cbb

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdc1 2048 937703087 468850520 83 Linux

All looks good, now we will go ahead and "WRITE" it:

Command (m for help): w

The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

Syncing disks.

So now, we have our partition, we want to create an ext4 filesystem on it.

root@server:~# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdc1

mke2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)

Discarding device blocks: done

Filesystem label=

OS type: Linux

Block size=4096 (log=2)

Fragment size=4096 (log=2)

Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks

29310976 inodes, 117212630 blocks

5860631 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user

First data block=0

Maximum filesystem blocks=4294967296

3578 block groups

32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group

8192 inodes per group

Superblock backups stored on blocks:

32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,

4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,

102400000

Allocating group tables: done

Writing inode tables: done

Creating journal (32768 blocks): done

Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

Now that the filesystem has been created, we will move ahead, and locate the disk's UUID, create a mount point, mount it, and configure it for mounting on boot.
In the example below we can locate our Disk UUID.  We will only need UUID="9262f711-a6ba-4aad-dac4-a73eb92225e0" from the below example:

root@server:~# blkid /dev/sdc1

/dev/sdc1: UUID="9262f711-a6ba-4aad-dac4-a73eb92225e0" TYPE="ext4"

In this example, we're going to configure to auto-mount it to "/db2" in the root file directory. Below is a default value, You will need to set the UUID (as shown above), mount point, and filesystem type.

root@server:~# echo "UUID=9262f711-a6ba-4aad-dac4-a73eb92225e0 /db2 ext4 defaults 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

Now we want to create the mount point, and mount our new drive:

root@server:~# mkdir /db2

root@server:~# mount /db2

As you can see below, it's now mounted, and available in the below directory:

root@server:~# df -h /db2

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/sdc1 441G 199M 418G 1% /db2