Debian :: Manually Partitioning And Formatting Large Hard Disk
Jan 5, 2016
What is the recommended method these days for command line partitioning and formatting for the Terabyte size hard disk.?
It was easy to keep up when your working or have access to hardware for re-purposing, but that has all dried up and my knowledge has been left behind. The problem(s) are with new, recent hardware
Following a crash from a now detectable faulty stick of RAMM, I've lost one of my data hard disks and my fiddling with replacement seems to leave various errors/warnings mainly about GPT not supported and this message is still present despite trying fdisk, cfdisk, gpart, gparted, and(?).
System is an ASUS mobo using SATA drives (root 500Gb: MBR+3 partitions;/, swap, /home), and two 2.4TB with single partitions.
I have only known about Linux software for the past couple of weeks. I want to install Ubuntu 10.10 on an older desktop I have so I can become more familiar with it. I am average in knowladge about Windows OS and MS-DOS. I tried to install Ubuntu and I get an error message about the harddrive. The CD I am booting with will load on my other PC with Windows XP on it. I have only let it run on it long enough to verify that it is bootable.
I have made a floppy boot disc following the instructions on another Linux site about Ubuntu. I have also tried to boot my alternate PC with the floppy and it boots up. The harddrive on my working PC is a Maxtor 40gb formatted with NTFS file system. The harddrive in the older desktop is a Western Digital 80GB WD800LB-55DNA0.It worked fine with Windows XP on it. I also made a Western Digital DATA Lifeguard for DOS floppy and it boots with it.
However, I want to totally format the hard disk so I have no operating systems left on there.
I have created a usb boot disk for installing windows.
So I want to re-format the whole hard disk. Then boot up with the usb and install windows. Once I have done that. Then use the rest of the hard disk to install Fedora 14 from my other usb.
However, I am not sure how to completely format the hard disk. I want to start from a clean disk.
I am definitely non-techy, non-geeky, a GUI guy really, but learning steadily - I have been using Linux for a while now, have just moved on to Ubuntu and find it really great to use - I now feel confident enough to have just Ubuntu Linux on my Sony Vaio laptop (at the moment I have dual boot with Windows XP)
however there are just a few Windows programs that I need to use that will not run under Wine
so I would value comments/advice on my 'grand plan'
1) re-format the Windows partition so that Ubuntu can use the entire hard disk (I don't know the best way to acheive this - is it to reinstall Ubuntu using all available disk space? or is it better to just format over the Windows partition and treat it as a second hard disk?)
2) install VirtualBox and use a version of Windows as a guest OS so I can use those Windows programs when I need to - I understand this is easier than having to reboot the computer to get access to Windows
I have a computer that was given to me and is no longer booting up properly. It's an Acer with VISTA installed. I would like to format the hard drive and start over with Linux. I don't have the original windows vista disk, I don't believe the computer even came with one, and no back up disks. Apparently this is the only way to format VISTA. When I am in the command prompt here is what happens.
C:> format c: The type of the file system is NTFS. Enter correct volume lable for drive C: I don't know the correct label.
Searching on the forums I found this. format c:/fs:NTFS/p:/ That doesn't work. I get this: "Invalid parameter - /p:"
I have a BIOS affected by 1024 cylinder limit ,,(Just to explain , the BIOS will recognize only 137GB no matter how big the HDD is (160/250/320/500))This problem doesnt affect the OS in any way --Linux can read the entire disk and so can WIN after SP1 of XP...This problem is only upto the point of MBR handing over boot instructions to Bootloader..In that case LiLo or Grub1 or Grub2 would fail if the kernel of the OS is after the 137GBI want to know if I can mix 2 partitioning schemes..Say use MSDOS partitioning till the limit of say 100 GB and for the rest 60 GB use GPT partitioning and install GRUB2 (as I read only GRUB2 supports GPT cleanly) ...Then , maybe I can do away with options of restricting /boot within 137
I've recently installed openSUSE 11.3 with GNOME When I was working on desktop settings, it locked itself, and it doesn't accept password I set during installation. I know that password is right, because it worked in YaST.
How to solve this problem without loosing any files? I haven't done backup... Is it possible to reinstall system, without formatting hard disk, and loosing files?
create a partition seperate from my home directory out of it. i have a 500 gig hard drive and i wish to create a 70 gig partition on it on install i used entire disk is there any way to make a partition after this for i do not want to reinstall.
trying to manually partition while installing 10.04, unfortunately from an old windows os, which came w/ the computer. i probably shouldn't bother to save it, but i wanted the practice w/ partitioning. the book i'm using is a good one, but maybe too advanced, and didn't specify. when i shrank the old win os into a smaller space on the drive, it gave me the option to check a box for format or leave it unchecked. which should i do, so as not to delete what's already on the drive? and do i mount it anywhere? in /windows, or i think the other option was msdos? what results in each case?
I don't want sympathy, but merely explain what I'm up against. I'm 63 years old. I'm on medical and mental disability (Cognitive failure, the beginning of Alzheimer's). I used to be a good computer tech, but now, because of my memory problems, I don't remember how to do a lot of things with a computer.I'm seeking assistance (not 24/7 help or hand-holding)to help me reformat,partition, and set-up a dual-boot for both WIN 2000 Pro and Ubuntu Linux to operate programs where I can use my Amateur (Ham) Radio in digital modes (PSK-31, PSK-64, BPSK, cw, etc). I'm choosing NOT to run Ham Radio DeLuxe, as it's bloated with M$ "code" and could be hacked and messed with.
The hard drive is a Maxtor 80 gig (78 g formatted). I have another drive,a Western Digital 40 gig (37 g formatted) that I use for Windows as well, but mostly it contains Excel spreadsheets with Part 90 - Public Safety frequency information for the local (within 250 miles) from my home. It's a FAT 32 and I'd like the 80 gig to match that
This has now happened with 3 computers. I boot the i386 iso on a usb stick and I enter my name fine and create an account with a password, and then after the time is checked, the installation gets halfway through the hard disk bar and then suddenly it freezes. Sorry if i'm a little unspecific, I've forgotten what the name of the process was exactly and I don't want to have to try again if unnecessary.
I'm trying to perform a clean installation of 8.0.0-i386 from a CD. Seven consecutive attempts all result in the same issue: Almost immediately after commiting the disk partitioning settings (i.e., to begin formatting), the computer does a hard restart. I have tried doing the partitioning as early as possible in the installation process, just in case the system is running out of memory; I have also tried using the lowmem option. I suspect the problem may be related to my very old hardware...
Micronics serverboard 440BX chipset* Dual Pentium II 450MHz CPUs* 1GB ECC RAM* Adaptec AHA-2940UW SCSI adapter IBM Ultrastar 36GB UW-SCSI HDD ATAPI CD-ROM Matrox G100 AGP video card* *starred items are all original parts from an Intergraph server with validation/verification stickers attesting to their intercompatibility
No POST errors, the HDD passed verification using the Adaptec ROM utility, all unnecessary hardware removed
Could it be that I need an older release or some custom-compiled kernel? The only thing I could come up with on the web was that a lot of people have a similar failure with modern distros on non-PAE CPUs, but the P-II should not be susceptible to this problem.
So, my issues since upgrading to Jessie seem to compound. When I fix one issue, two more arise. Right now, I have a full system disk. How it got so full. So I started poking around. I ran
Code: Select all find / -type f -size +50M -exec ls -lh {} ; | awk '{ print $NF ": " $5 }'
Found a few files I could delete, and did, but I also found Code: Select all/var/log/syslog.1: 33G /var/log/messages: 33G /var/log/user.log: 33G
What I find strange is that they're all exactly 33G each. So that accounts for the missing 99GB I deleted them, however only recovered 27Gb. Whats weird is when I type df -h I get
What are the tmpfs's and how can I reclaim that space, and what is /dev/dm-0 and why is that taking up so much space?
I have 2 LVGs vgdisplay -v
Code: Select allroot@SETV-007-WOWZA:~# vgdisplay -v DEGRADED MODE. Incomplete RAID LVs will be processed. Finding all volume groups Finding volume group "WOWZASERVER"
[Code] ....
After deleting the log files, I was able to regain access to my GDM session. But I still cant find out what /dev/dm-0 is, and where all the 75 GB is being taken up.
I just noticed, however, even though I can access the drive A-OK via browser, terminal, and web services (Our wowza) when I enter gParted I get this error for sda, my primary OS drive!
Code: Select all Libparted Bug Found!
Error informing the kernel about modifications to partition /dev/sda2 -- Invalid argument. This means Linux won't know about any changes you made to /dev/sda2 until you reboot -- so you shouldn't mount it or use it in any way before rebooting
Now that I'm in gParted I see 3 partitions: [URL] ....
It reports now, that I have used ALL of my disk space.
Post Log delete, and fresh reboot, this is what Code: Select alldf -h outputs
I am a total noob for Linux / Ubuntu. I have been using windows all my life and I decided to get rid of Bill finally. I want to install Ubuntu by Manually partitioning my HD. I have a 500GB HDD. optimal partition scheme. I repeat i am a total Noob. please let me know details for each partition like
1. Primary or Logical 2. type 3. mount point 4. size
I am having no other OS in the pc. just planning to have ubuntu. no dual boot needed.
I want to install Linux Mint 11 (just came out) to a USB drive. My USB drive is 34 gb. So I want to put a 1-2 gb partition on it and install mint just to that. Is that possible? I am a noob so I want to use [URL] but the screenshots don't show an option for a partition or state any extra steps that might be involved in doing this (there's a tutorial for doing this for one of the Ubuntus using fdisk, but I don't have any linux installs right now).
I have been trying to install centos on my hp servers and when i get to partitions my hard drives the OS does not detect any harddrives. I have 4 scsi drives and i believe a intergrated smart array controller.
I usually use Ubuntu as a way of accessing my hard drive when Windows 7 crashes. I now want to reinstall Ubuntu on my hard drive as a seperate OS on its own partition.
I installed Windows 7 already, and I allocated about 60gb for Ubuntu. The problem now is manually arranging the different options in the Ubuntu partitioning menu. I tried the automatic installation but I was unhappy with the fact that it merged my W7 and the Ubuntu installation on a partition.
after installing Ubuntu on one WD 500 GB hard disk and after making mistake and pasting wrong code into Terminal:my OTHER WD 500 GB hard disk that was also in the system (I guess it was "hd1") - died.The problem must be, I guess, I typed wrong code: "hd1,1" instead of "hd0,0".)500 GB (NTFS) of data was on that other (non-Ubuntu) hard disk, and now I can not access it anymore. While booting, system gives "Hard Disk Error" warning and stops.One again: I installed Ubuntu od one hard disk and at the end of instalation I pasted wrong code for GRUB, giving address of another hard disk. Now that other hard disk has error and will not work
I have a sata 320 gb with mandriva linux 2009.1 on it.And it is what curently atached to my cpu. It is shown as 'sda' in the partition table.I also have another 40gb hard disk with windows xp installed on it.It is shown as 'hda' in the partition table . Now what i want to do is attach this 40gb hard disk to my pc and configure grub on my 320gb hard disk('sda') so as to boot windows xp(which is residing on the second hard disk,'hda')Can anyone tell me if what im doing is feasible or not? If it is feasible,can anyone suggest me how to get it working. I know i just need to add 2-3 lines to my grub.conf, but dont know what exactly i need to write.
I had a dual boot (windows 7 + debian), both of them installed in my internal hard disk, with the GRUB in it. I have recently installed a second linux distro (mint), but I put it in an external hard disk. Now the GRUB allows me to boot any of the three operating systems, but I need the external disk to do it. It seems that after the mint installation the GRUB is now working from the external disk (if the external disk is not connected, the machine does not boot.) �Is there a way to change the location of the GRUB, to the internal hard disk of my laptop?
I was using Terminal and browsing a directory in my home folder. My "home" directory is located on "/dev/sdb1". When in Terminal I typed "ls" in one of my directories and the output was garbage. The output didn't show the files in the directory. I think it said something like, "input/output error". Unfortunately, I didn't write the exact error down. Instead I rebooted.The hard disk with the problem is:
Code: $ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdb [sudo] password for brian:
Debian and debian based distros issue has a issue that has come to make it self aware to me when I was trying to burn a video on my hard drive with braseo and it won't let me burn more than 4.4 gigs to a dvd with 4.7 gigs of free space even a file that is over the 4.4 gig limit by a megabyte with windows i didn't have this problem. One more thing I have 16 gig flash drive and on debian and debian based distros i can only use 13.1 gigs of it but on fedora I can use all 16 gigs.
I've been asked to move data from an old external hard drive to a new one, and to make the new one compatible with the Macintosh. (The old drive's USB connection has died, and I'm connecting to old the drive using a PC card that provieds an eSATA to the drive. The recipient's Macintosh doesn't have a PC card slot, so she can't access the old drive anymore. Hence, the new drive.)
Naturally, I'm doing this data transfer using Linux. I've discovered that I can format the drive as HFS+ using mkfs.hfsplus from the hfsprogs package. But I need to know: do I need to do anything special with the partition table? Is there a special Macintosh partition table format that I need to format this disk to? If so, what tools can I use to get the right format for the partition table?
I bought a 3 TB western digital but I cannot format it. I have to split into 2TB and 1TB (or less because it holds 2.73 TB actually). Is that normal because of linux does not support 3tb yet? I note that I tried into EXT4 and JFS (after tabel creating)
I installed an OS on the second hard-disk/partition3 (/dev/sdb3; OS was FreeBSD). Added the entry and when i boot: nothing. I choose the OS from grub's menu, the list of choices vanishes, the background image stays, and there it hangs. It hangs until i hit: ctrl+alt+backspace. I have thought: to hell with it, and installed Debian/Lenny. Same problem (OH!).
I also installed the boot-loader to the second disk (/dev/sdb), hit F11 after the BIOS-screen and chosen the second hard-disk to boot from: a similar problem. It hangs, and the keyboard is "dead". I am clueless what to check for (i checked the general culprits, but with UUID its all a bit of a mess. I would say it looks good, but wouldn't bet on it) Anyone ever heard of something like that? Without error message its not easy to use the amazing Google. I do a bit of grub-troubleshooting, usually it works, but usually i get error-messages.
I made two threads about it, in case they contain useful info, here they are: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... sd-827059/ http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=17021
I am trying a network install of debian 6.0 by dumping the contents of a DVD onto my local http server. For some reason the Western Digital 80 GB pata HDD doesn't get detected when I click on 'detect disk', I even tried with a SATA, no luck.
I have an external hard disk for USB port. I formatted it on MS for NTFS system.working fine on MS. But can not write while on Debian. Permission denied. Want to use for both on Debian & MS.
I have been trying to figure out how to format my hard drive when I'm installing Fedora 11. When I boot from the live disk, all installation were done automatically, so I didn't see how I can do it. I tried googling it, but didn't find anything on how to do it either.
