Format and Mount Disks

Note on naming convention:

• disks are labelled as /dev/sdX where X is some letter a, b c…
• partitions on a disk include a number /dev/sdXn where n is 1, 2, 3…

You can see all disks and partitions with: $ sudo fdisk -l

Formatting a new disk

First create a partition using fdisk: $ sudo fdisk /dev/sdX

• Add new partition: n
• as primary: p
• with number: 1
• use default first & last sectors (to partition the full disk as one)
• and write the changes: w

Now we can format the partition with ext4: $ sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdXn

Mounting a disk (permanently)

First mount the partition temporarily: $ sudo mount /dev/sdXn /mnt/location

To mount permanently we’ll need to grab the UUID of the partition from $ sudo blkid

and add a line into $ sudo vim /etc/fstab:

UUID=<ID from blkid> /mnt/location ext4 defaults 0 0