Hard Disk Partition

Steps to format/partition a hard disk drive

Determine hard disk drive attributes.

Create a backup disk image (.iso or .img).
Choose what file system to utilize
Partition using Ubuntu disk utility.
Partition using Terminal
Create a custom mount point
Mount drive on startup.

Hard Drive Attributes

Step 1. If you are trying to format or partition your hard drive it is

assumed that bios is able to detect the device. To determine the
path and other specific information about your drive open a terminal
window and enter this command:

1 sudo lshw -C disk

Step 2. After entering this command Ubuntu should return

something similar to this. Take note of the logical name because
this will be used throughout the partitioning process if done via
terminal window.

Displaying Hard Drive Information

Step 3. The part we will be most concerned with will be the hard
drive information that is displayed in the terminal window.

What file system to use

If you plan on using the hard drive only for Ubuntu then the
recommended filesystemto use is either ext3/ext4 depending on
whether or not you need backwards compatibility with previous
versions of Linux. If you will need to share files between Ubuntu and
Windows machines fat 32 is the recommended file system to use,
butNTFS will also work well also.

Format & Partition hard drive using disk utility

Step 1. First navigate to the control panel and click on the disk
utility. If your disk already contains a partition and you would like to
re-size it to make room for a separate partition see below.

Step 2. In the disk utility select the drive on the left hand side that
you would like to format/partition. If you are formatting be sure the
drive is non mounted. You can un-mount it once you have selected
it. A new window will open asking you what scheme you would like
to use to format the drive.The Master Boot Record scheme will work
with Ubuntu and Windows operating systems. It will also work with
Macintosh operating systems however the operating system will not
be able to be installed on this disk. The apple system will still be
able to read the data contained on the disk.

Disk utility

Choose Partition/Format Drive

Step 3. After your drive is formatted (or if it was already) you can
select the Create a Partition button.

Step 4. After clicking Create a Partition you will see a screen similar
to the one above. Here you can adjust the size of your partition as
well as its type and name. You can also have Ubuntu take ownership
of the filesystem. This prevents you from loading a different OS on
it. Also you may be unable to read the drive from certain OS.

Finish. Thats it. Your drive is now formatted/partitioned. Repeat as

needed.
You can change the type of partition that will be created based on
your own needs. This website will provide you with all the
information you will need to decide which partition scheme to use,
as well as the partition type most appropriate for your needs.

Partition using command line in Terminal

The program you will use to do this is fdisk. You will need to refer
back to the logical name of your drive found earlier to use this
method.
Step 1. Start fdisk with this command

Step 2. Press m then hit enter. This will return a menu like the
one below showing all of the available commands for the fdisk
program.

Step 3. Since we want to add a new partition press n and

then enter.

Step 4. To create a primary partition (what we want) press p and

then hit enter.

Step 5. If you only want 1 partition press 1 and hit enter. You
may be provided with a default response, you may choose this as
the Partition number if you would like. Next you will be prompted for
the locations of where you would like the first and last sectors of the

partition to be. You may again be provided with default responses,

choose these if you want.
Step 6. Now choose w to write the partition to the disk. Type w
then press enter.Your drive is now partitioned. Now we need to
format it. By default Linux will recognize this partition as dev/sdb1.
Step 7. To format the partition with an ext3 filesystem. . .

1 sudo mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb1

To format fat32 replace the ext3 with fat32