GNU Parted Simple Tutorial

Just an easy little tutorial to demonstrate how to create a partition table on an empty drive... or overwrite one on an old drive

parted /dev/sdc
GNU Parted 3.2
Using /dev/sdc
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted)

First let's see what is on the disk already

(parted) print
Error: /dev/sdc: unrecognised disk label
Model: ATA ST3500418AS (scsi)                                             
Disk /dev/sdc: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: unknown
Disk Flags: 
(parted)

Create Partition Table

Make a partition table (here I will make a standard MSDOS partition table

(parted) mklabel msdos
(parted)

Great, now a primary partition for the full size of the disk, I also want it to be a Linux partition. Then to check that it is optimally aligned. Oh, and make it bootable.

(parted) mkpart primary ext3 2M 499G
(parted) align-check opt 1
1 aligned
(parted) set 1 boot on
(parted) 

Now then... check that everything is as we expect

(parted) print                                                    
Model: ATA ST3500418AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End    Size   Type     File system  Flags
 1      2097kB  499GB  499GB  primary  ext3         boot, lba

(parted)  

Excellent! Now quit and try to mount the partition

(parted) quit

All is well, and we used parted rather than fdisk.