CONFIGURING DISK DEVICES

MADE BY
VANSHIKA SRISVASTAVA
KEVIN DCRUZ
What is a disk drive?
A disk drive is a randomly addressable and rewritable storage device.
The term can be broadly interpreted to include optical drives and in earlier times,
floppy drives. It has come to relate mainly to hard disk drives (HDDs).
Disk drives can either be housed internally within a computer or housed in a
separate box that is external to the computer.
They are found in PCs, servers, laptops and storage arrays.
They work by rotating very rapidly around a head or heads, which read and write
data.
They differ from solid state drives (SSDs), which have no moving parts and offer
greater performance, but also cost more and generally offer less capacity.
Locating and recognising hard disk devices

• Data is normally stored on magnetic or optical disk platters

• Data is written in concentric circles called tracks.
• Tracks are divided into 512 byte sectors, with more unused space
• In the Linux Operating System we require to create one or more
partitions
• The fdisk is used to create and delete partitions
Disc Partition

• Primary Extended Logical

• The primary partitions has maximum four partitions. The hard disk devices
were named /dev/hdx or /dev/sdx with x depending on the hardware
configuration. The name is followed by the starting partition number, with
the count 1.
• The extended has a single partition. Logical partition count always starts at
5
• The logical is embedded within the extended partition. For example
/dev/hda3 is the third partition on first ATA hard disk device, and
/dev/hdb5 is the first logical partition on the second ATA hard disk device.
Configuring Disk Devices

• Extended partitions of a container holds logical drives.

• Two partitions exist on /dev/sdb.
• The first partition spans 31 cylinders and contains a Linux swap
partition.
• The second partition is much bigger.
Use of p command
• Command (m for help): p
• ascertaining the costs and benefits of undertaking the project
• Disk /dev/sdb: 1073 MB, 1073741824 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 130
cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start
End Blocks Id System When no partitions exist we pass n to create a new
partition. The character p chosen for primary, 1 for the partition number, 1 for
the start cylinder and 14 for the end cylinder.
• Command (m for help): n
• Command action e extended p primary partition (1-4) Partition number (1-4):
1 First cylinder (1-130, default 1): Using default value 1 Last cylinder or +size
or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-130, default 130): 14
Command (m for help): p
• ascertaining the costs and benefits of undertaking the project
• Disk /dev/sdb: 1073 MB, 1073741824 bytes 255 heads, 63
sectors/track, 130 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 =
8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 14
112423+ 83 Linux
Command (m for help): w
• Command action e extended p primary partition (1-4) Partition
number (1-4): 1 First cylinder (1-130, default 1): Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-130, default 130): 14
THANK YOU!