Fdisk

Fdisk

SYNOPSIS

 

 

        fdisk [-u] [ device ] fdisk -l [-u] [ device ... ] fdisk -s partition ... fdisk -v 

DESCRIPTION
Hard disks can be divided into one or more logical disks called partitions. Linux needs at least one partition for its root file system (/root) but for efficiency we will learn which partitions are required to have it properly configured. Invoking Fdisk displays a menu driven program for creation and manipulation of partition tables. It handles DOS, BSD and SUN type disk-labels (also known as disk slices). In the UNIX world, device = (hard drive) uses the following convention for labeling the drive:

Examples:
IDE hard drives: /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, /dev/hdc

/ = root

/dev = device

/hda = hard drive A

For SCSI hard drives (/sda means SCSI drive A)
For ESDI hard drives ( /eda mans ESDI drive A)

Note a device name, is followed by a partition number when created. For example, /dev/hda1 is the first partition on the first IDE drive in the system. IDE disks can have up to 63 partitions, SCSI disks up to 15.

I want to make emphasis that when you work with Linux, The partitions can be done differently. Fdisk is not the only way to create partitions for Linux; as a matter of fact there are better options. After all you might end in a lot of trouble using fdisk. Instead of fdisk I will show you the best way how to partition a Linux box using a utility that comes with Linux called Disk Druid.