FDISK(8) System Administration FDISK(8) NAME fdisk - manipulate disk partition table SYNOPSIS fdisk [options] device fdisk -l [device...] DESCRIPTION fdisk is a dialog-driven program for creation and manipulation of partition tables. It understands GPT, MBR, Sun, SGI and BSD partition tables. Block devices can be divided into one or more logical disks called parti- tions. This division is recorded in the partition table, usually found in sector 0 of the disk. (In the BSD world one talks about `disk slices' and a `disklabel'.) All partitioning is driven by device I/O limits (the topology) by default. fdisk is able to optimize the disk layout for a 4K-sector size and use an alignment offset on modern devices for MBR and GPT. It is always a good idea to follow fdisk's defaults as the default values (e.g., first and last partition sectors) and partition sizes specified by the +/-<size>{M,G,...} notation are always aligned according to the device properties. CHS (Cylinder-Head-Sector) addressing is deprecated and not used by de- fault. Please, do not follow old articles and recommendations with fdisk -S <n> -H <n> advice for SSD or 4K-sector devices. Note that partx(8) provides a rich interface for scripts to print disk lay- outs, fdisk is mostly designed for humans. Backward compatibility in the output of fdisk is not guaranteed. The input (the commands) should always be backward compatible. OPTIONS -b, --sector-size sectorsize Specify the sector size of the disk. Valid values are 512, 1024, 2048, and 4096. The kernel is aware of the sector size for regular block de- vices. Use this option only on very old kernels, when working with disk images, or to override the kernel's default sector size. Since util-linux-2.17, fdisk distinguishes between logical and physical sec- tor size. This option changes both sector sizes to the specified sec- torsize. -B, --protect-boot Don't erase the beginning of the first disk sector when creating a new disk label. This feature is supported for GPT and MBR. -c, --compatibility[=mode] Specify the compatibility mode, 'dos' or 'nondos'. The default is non-DOS mode. For backward compatibility, it is possible to use the op- tion without the mode argument -- then the default is used. Note that the optional mode argument cannot be separated from the -c option by a space, the correct form is for example -c=dos. -L, --color[=when] Colorize the output. The optional argument when can be auto, never or always. If the when argument is omitted, it defaults to auto. The col- ors can be disabled; for the current built-in default see the --help output. See also the COLORS section. -l, --list List the partition tables for the specified devices and then exit. If no devices are given, the devices mentioned in /proc/partitions (if this file exists) are used. Devices are always listed in the order in which they are specified on the command-line, or by the kernel listed in /proc/partitions. -x, --list-details Like --list, but provides more details. --lock[=mode] Use exclusive BSD lock for device or file it operates. The optional ar- gument mode can be yes, no (or 1 and 0) or nonblock. If the mode argu- ment is omitted, it defaults to yes. This option overwrites environment variable $LOCK_BLOCK_DEVICE. The default is not to use any lock at all, but it's recommended to avoid collisions with systemd-udevd(8) or other tools. -n, --noauto-pt Don't automatically create a default partition table on empty device. The partition table has to be explicitly created by user (by command like 'o', 'g', etc.). -o, --output list Specify which output columns to print. Use --help to get a list of all supported columns. The default list of columns may be extended if list is specified in the format +list (e.g., -o +UUID). -s, --getsz Print the size in 512-byte sectors of each given block device. This op- tion is DEPRECATED in favour of blockdev(8). -t, --type type Enable support only for disklabels of the specified type, and disable support for all other types. -u, --units[=unit] When listing partition tables, show sizes in 'sectors' or in 'cylin- ders'. The default is to show sizes in sectors. For backward compati- bility, it is possible to use the option without the unit argument -- then the default is used. Note that the optional unit argument cannot be separated from the -u option by a space, the correct form is for ex- ample '-u=cylinders'. -C, --cylinders number Specify the number of cylinders of the disk. I have no idea why anybody would want to do so. -H, --heads number Specify the number of heads of the disk. (Not the physical number, of course, but the number used for partition tables.) Reasonable values are 255 and 16. -S, --sectors number Specify the number of sectors per track of the disk. (Not the physical number, of course, but the number used for partition tables.) A reason- able value is 63. -w, --wipe when Wipe filesystem, RAID and partition-table signatures from the device, in order to avoid possible collisions. The argument when can be auto, never or always. When this option is not given, the default is auto, in which case signatures are wiped only when in interactive mode. In all cases detected signatures are reported by warning messages before a new partition table is created. See also wipefs(8) command. -W, --wipe-partitions when Wipe filesystem, RAID and partition-table signatures from a newly cre- ated partitions, in order to avoid possible collisions. The argument when can be auto, never or always. When this option is not given, the default is auto, in which case signatures are wiped only when in inter- active mode and after confirmation by user. In all cases detected sig- natures are reported by warning messages before a new partition is cre- ated. See also wipefs(8) command. -h, --help Display help text and exit. -V, --version Display version and exit. DEVICES The device is usually /dev/sda, /dev/sdb or so. A device name refers to the entire disk. Old systems without libata (a library used inside the Linux kernel to support ATA host controllers and devices) make a difference be- tween IDE and SCSI disks. In such cases the device name will be /dev/hd* (IDE) or /dev/sd* (SCSI). The partition is a device name followed by a partition number. For example, /dev/sda1 is the first partition on the first hard disk in the system. See also Linux kernel documentation (the Documentation/admin-guide/devices.txt file). SIZES The "last sector" dialog accepts partition size specified by number of sec- tors or by +/-<size>{K,B,M,G,...} notation. If the size is prefixed by '+' then it is interpreted as relative to the partition first sector. If the size is prefixed by '-' then it is inter- preted as relative to the high limit (last available sector for the parti- tion). In the case the size is specified in bytes, then the number may be followed by the multiplicative suffixes KiB (1024 bytes), MiB (1024*1024 bytes), and so on for GiB, TiB, PiB, EiB, ZiB and YiB. The "iB" is optional, e.g., "K" has the same meaning as "KiB". The relative sizes if specified with multiplicative suffixes (e.g. +100MiB) are always aligned according to device I/O limits. The +/-<size>{K,B,M,G,...} notation is recommended. The last sector of the partition is strictly calculated as <start> + <size> (without -1) if the size is specified by the +<sectors> notation. In this case, the size is not aligned to the device I/O limits. For backward compatibility fdisk also accepts the suffixes KB (1000 bytes), MB (1000*1000 bytes), and so on for GB, TB, PB, EB, ZB and YB. These 10^N suffixes are deprecated. SCRIPT FILES fdisk allows reading (by 'I' command) sfdisk(8) compatible script files. The script is applied to in-memory partition table, and then it is possible to modify the partition table before you write it to the device. And vice-versa it is possible to write the current in-memory disk layout to the script file by command 'O'. The script files are compatible between cfdisk(8), sfdisk(8), fdisk and other libfdisk applications. For more details see sfdisk(8). DISK LABELS GPT (GUID Partition Table) GPT is modern standard for the layout of the partition table. GPT uses 64-bit logical block addresses, checksums, UUIDs and names for parti- tions and an unlimited number of partitions (although the number of partitions is usually restricted to 128 in many partitioning tools). Note that the first sector is still reserved for a protective MBR in the GPT specification. It prevents MBR-only partitioning tools from mis-recognizing and overwriting GPT disks. GPT is always a better choice than MBR, especially on modern hardware with a UEFI boot loader. DOS-type (MBR) A DOS-type partition table can describe an unlimited number of parti- tions. In sector 0 there is room for the description of 4 partitions (called `primary'). One of these may be an extended partition; this is a box holding logical partitions, with descriptors found in a linked list of sectors, each preceding the corresponding logical partitions. The four primary partitions, present or not, get numbers 1-4. Logical partitions are numbered starting from 5. In a DOS-type partition table the starting offset and the size of each partition is stored in two ways: as an absolute number of sectors (given in 32 bits), and as a Cylinders/Heads/Sectors triple (given in 10+8+6 bits). The former is OK -- with 512-byte sectors this will work up to 2 TB. The latter has two problems. First, these C/H/S fields can be filled only when the number of heads and the number of sectors per track are known. And second, even if we know what these numbers should be, the 24 bits that are available do not suffice. DOS uses C/H/S only, Windows uses both, Linux never uses C/H/S. The C/H/S addressing is dep- recated and may be unsupported in some later fdisk version. Please, read the DOS-mode section if you want DOS-compatible parti- tions. fdisk does not care about cylinder boundaries by default. BSD/Sun-type A BSD/Sun disklabel can describe 8 partitions, the third of which should be a `whole disk' partition. Do not start a partition that actu- ally uses its first sector (like a swap partition) at cylinder 0, since that will destroy the disklabel. Note that a BSD label is usually nested within a DOS partition. IRIX/SGI-type An IRIX/SGI disklabel can describe 16 partitions, the eleventh of which should be an entire `volume' partition, while the ninth should be la- beled `volume header'. The volume header will also cover the partition table, i.e., it starts at block zero and extends by default over five cylinders. The remaining space in the volume header may be used by header directory entries. No partitions may overlap with the volume header. Also do not change its type or make some filesystem on it, since you will lose the partition table. Use this type of label only when working with Linux on IRIX/SGI machines or IRIX/SGI disks under Linux. A sync(2) and an ioctl(BLKRRPART) (rereading the partition table from disk) are performed before exiting when the partition table has been updated. DOS MODE AND DOS 6.X WARNING Note that all this is deprecated. You don't have to care about things like geometry and cylinders on modern operating systems. If you really want DOS-compatible partitioning then you have to enable DOS mode and cylinder units by using the '-c=dos -u=cylinders' fdisk command-line options. The DOS 6.x FORMAT command looks for some information in the first sector of the data area of the partition, and treats this information as more re- liable than the information in the partition table. DOS FORMAT expects DOS FDISK to clear the first 512 bytes of the data area of a partition whenever a size change occurs. DOS FORMAT will look at this extra information even if the /U flag is given -- we consider this a bug in DOS FORMAT and DOS FDISK. The bottom line is that if you use fdisk or cfdisk(8) to change the size of a DOS partition table entry, then you must also use dd(1) to zero the first 512 bytes of that partition before using DOS FORMAT to format the parti- tion. For example, if you were using fdisk to make a DOS partition table entry for /dev/sda1, then (after exiting fdisk and rebooting Linux so that the partition table information is valid) you would use the command dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1 bs=512 count=1 to zero the first 512 bytes of the partition. fdisk usually obtains the disk geometry automatically. This is not neces- sarily the physical disk geometry (indeed, modern disks do not really have anything like a physical geometry, certainly not something that can be de- scribed in the simplistic Cylinders/Heads/Sectors form), but it is the disk geometry that MS-DOS uses for the partition table. Usually all goes well by default, and there are no problems if Linux is the only system on the disk. However, if the disk has to be shared with other operating systems, it is often a good idea to let an fdisk from another op- erating system make at least one partition. When Linux boots it looks at the partition table, and tries to deduce what (fake) geometry is required for good cooperation with other systems. Whenever a partition table is printed out in DOS mode, a consistency check is performed on the partition table entries. This check verifies that the physical and logical start and end points are identical, and that each par- tition starts and ends on a cylinder boundary (except for the first parti- tion). Some versions of MS-DOS create a first partition which does not begin on a cylinder boundary, but on sector 2 of the first cylinder. Partitions begin- ning in cylinder 1 cannot begin on a cylinder boundary, but this is un- likely to cause difficulty unless you have OS/2 on your machine. For best results, you should always use an OS-specific partition table pro- gram. For example, you should make DOS partitions with the DOS FDISK pro- gram and Linux partitions with the Linux fdisk or Linux cfdisk(8) programs. COLORS The output colorization is implemented by terminal-colors.d(5) functional- ity. Implicit coloring can be disabled by an empty file /etc/terminal-colors.d/fdisk.disable for the fdisk command or for all tools by /etc/terminal-colors.d/disable Since version 2.41, the $NO_COLOR environment variable is also supported to disable output colorization unless explicitly enabled by a command-line op- tion. The user-specific $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/terminal-colors.d or $HOME/.config/ter- minal-colors.d overrides the global setting. Note that the output colorization may be enabled by default, and in this case terminal-colors.d directories do not have to exist yet. The logical color names supported by fdisk are: header The header of the output tables. help-title The help section titles. warn The warning messages. welcome The welcome message. ENVIRONMENT FDISK_DEBUG=all enables fdisk debug output. LIBFDISK_DEBUG=all enables libfdisk debug output. LIBBLKID_DEBUG=all enables libblkid debug output. LIBSMARTCOLS_DEBUG=all enables libsmartcols debug output. LIBSMARTCOLS_DEBUG_PADDING=on use visible padding characters. LOCK_BLOCK_DEVICE=<mode> use exclusive BSD lock. The mode is "1" or "0". See --lock for more de- tails. AUTHORS Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>, Davidlohr Bueso <dave@gnu.org> The original version was written by Andries E. Brouwer, A. V. Le Blanc and others. SEE ALSO cfdisk(8), mkfs(8), partx(8), sfdisk(8) REPORTING BUGS For bug reports, use the issue tracker <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>. AVAILABILITY The fdisk command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. util-linux 2.41.2 2025-09-22 FDISK(8)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | DEVICES | SIZES | SCRIPT FILES | DISK LABELS | DOS MODE AND DOS 6.X WARNING | COLORS | ENVIRONMENT | AUTHORS | SEE ALSO | REPORTING BUGS | AVAILABILITY
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