I know there are several similar questions out there, but many of the answers are terrible.
I guess fdisk can NOT support drives larger than 2TB? The interactive menu changed on me so I don't know what to do now. It asks me for first cylinder and last cylinder. I just want to make the whole thing ext4 for backups of my ubuntu box.
I don't understand why I can't get a filesystem on my hard drive. This is the output of sudo parted -l
after I complete the first trial.
# Install gdisk
sudo apt-get install gdisk
# Partition the external hard drive
sudo parted -l # inspect your drive's name and make sure it is the external one!
sudo umount /dev/sdx1 # ensure that drive is NOT mounted
sudo gdisk /dev/sdx1 # launch gdisk on the drive of interest
? # explore the features gdisk offers
n # create a [n]ew partition
[enter] # choose default partition number
[enter] # choose default first sector
[enter] # choose default last sector
[enter] # choose default, linux filesystem (8300)
v # verify
c # change the name of the partition, e.g. MY_BACKUP_3TB
p # print to ensure the renaming is to your liking
w # write the changes to disk
# Reboot (got warning that I needed to so kernal can recognize the change)
sudo reboot
# Format the hard drive
sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdx1 # create the filesystem as type ext4
# Inspect the results
sudo parted -l