Disk and tape drive commands
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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.