Disk and tape drive commands

Partitioning

 * cfdisk   - Interactive hard disc partition utility for text mode.
 * fdisk    - Launches a menu-driven program that partitions a hard disk.
 * parted   - command line partitioning tool. (parted sometimes complains about boundaries of partitions created with fdisk. parted can format a partition of type ext2 or fat32 partition while creating it.)

Formatting

 * mkfs     - front-end to various filesystem-creation tools
 * parted can create a filesystem while partitioning
 * mkfs.vfat /dev/sde1 to format a fat32 partition sde1
 * mkfs.ext2 /dev/sde2 to format an ext2 partition sde2

Tuning

 * tune2fs - command to tune ext2/ext3 filesystems
 * tune2fs -j /dev/sde2 to convert an ext2 filesystem sde2 to ext3 by adding a journal
 * tune2fs -L /dev/sde2 bulkdata to set the volume label of sde2 to "bulkdata"
 * debugfs  - Interactive utility to repair the ext2 filesystem on specified drive.
 * e2fsck- Performs an analysis of the filesystem's integrity and optionally repairs errors.
 * badblocks - Scans the specified drive for bad blocks.

Using a configured hard drive or tape

 * df     - Displays the amount of disc space used and remaining on all mounted filesystems.
 * hwinfo - Automatically recognizes all available CD-ROM drives.
 * mount  - Attaches the device to a specified directory, which will serve as the filesystem's mount point.
 * sync   - Flushes the filesystem buffers.
 * umount - Unmounts the filesystem specified by the device.
 * du     - Displays the amount of disc space used in the current directory.
 * duchs  - Lists the largest directories in human readable format
 * eject  - Ejects the media in the specified drive.

Rescuing

 * mc (midnight commander)     - Command line file manager. Can undelete files in unmounted ext2 filesystems.

Backing-up

 * partimage       - Backs up disk partitions into image files and restores them.

Logical Volume Management
See LVM.