8 Linux ‘Parted’ Commands to Create,

Resize and Rescue Disk Partitions

Parted is a famous command line tool that allows you to easily manage hard
disk partitions. It can help you add, delete, shrink and extend disk partitions
along with the file systems located on them. Parted has gone a long way from
when it first came out. Some of it’s functions have been removed, others have
been added.

In this tutorial you will learn the basics of parted and we will show you some
practical examples. If you don’t have any previous experience with parted,
please be aware that parted writes the changes immediately to your disk, so
be careful if you try to modify your disk partitions.

If you plan on testing parted, the better option would be to simply use a virtual
machine or old computer/laptop without any valuable information on it. To
make modifications on a disk partition it must not be in use. If you need to
work on primary partition, you may boot into rescue mode.

Note: You will need to have root access to the machine you will be working on
in order to use parted.
How to Install Parted on Linux
On many Linux distributions, parted comes pre-installed. If it is not included in
your distro, you can install it with:
$ sudo apt-get install parted [On Debian/Ubuntu systems]
# yum install parted [On RHEL/CentOS and Fedora]
# dnf install parted [On Fedora 22+ versions]

Once you have make sure that parted is installed, you can proceed further to
check out some real world examples of parted command in the rest of this
article.
1. Check Parted Version
Run the following command, you see message similar to the one shown on
the image below. Don’t worry if your parted version is different. Unless
specified otherwise, parted will use your primary drive, which in most cases
will be  /dev/sda .

$ parted

Check Parted Command Version

If you want to exit parted, simply type:

$ quit

2. List Linux Disk Partitions

Now that parted is started, let’s list the partitions of the selected hard disk. As
mentioned earlier, parted chooses your first drive by default. To see the disk
partitions run  print .

(parted) print
 Check Linux Partitions

When running  print , it will also display the hard disk information and model.
Here is example from a real hard disk (not virtual as shown on the image
above) :
(parted) print
Model: ATA TOSHIBA MQ01ACF0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 320GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Number  Start   End    Size   Type      File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  256MB  255MB  primary   ext2         boot
 2      257MB   320GB  320GB  extended
 5      257MB   320GB  320GB  logical                lvm

In the example above, you can see the disk model, capacity sector size and
partition table.

3. List or Switch to Different Disk

If you have more than one hard disk, you can easily switch between disks, by
using the “ select ” command. In the example below, I will switch
from  /dev/sda  to  /dev/sdb  which is a secondary drive on my system.
To easily switch between disks you can use:

(parted) select /dev/sdX

Select Different Disk

Change  "X"  with the letter of the disk to which you wish to switch.
4. Create Primary or Logical Partition in Linux
Parted can be used to create primary and logical disk partitions. In this
example, I will show you how to create primary partition, but the steps are the
same for logical partitions.
To create new partition, parted uses “ mkpart “. You can give it additional
parameters like  "primary" or  "logical"  depending on the partition type that you
wish to create.
Before you start creating partitions, it’s important to make sure that you are
using (you have selected) the right disk.

Start by using print:

(parted) print

Show Current Linux Disk

As shown on the above image, we are using a virtual drive of 34 GB. First we
will give the new disk a label and then create a partition and set a file system
on it.
Now the first step is to give the new disk a label name with:

(parted) mklabel msdos

Now create the new partition with   mkpart . The listed units are in megabytes
(MB). We will create a 10 GB partition starting from 1 to 10000:
(parted) mkpart

Partition type?  primary/extended? primary

File system type?  [ext2]?

Start? 1

End? 10000

(parted) print

Model: ATA VBOX HARDDISK (scsi)

Disk /dev/sdb: 34.4GB

Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B

Partition Table: msdos

Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags

1      1049kB  10.0GB  9999MB  primary  ext2         lba

 Create Primary or Logical Linux Partitions

Next,  exit parted with  "quit"  command. We will format our new partition in
ext4 file system using  mkfs . To make this happen run the following command:

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1

Note: It’s important to select the right disk and partition when executing the
above command!
Now let’s verify our results, by printing the partition table on our secondary
disk. Under file system column, you should see ext4 or the file system type
that you have decided to use for your partition:
 Verify Disk Partition Filesystem

5. Resize Linux Disk Partition

Parted includes multiple useful functions and one of them is  "resizepart" . As
you have probably figured this out by now,  "resizepart"  helps you resize a
partition.
In the example below, you will see how to resize an existing partition. For the
purpose of this example, we will be using the earlier created partition.

First you will need to know the number of the partition that you will be resizing.
This can be easily found by using  "print" :
(parted) print

Find Linux Partition Number

In our example, the partition number is  "1" . Now run the resizepart
command:

(parted) resizepart

You will be asked for the number of the partition that you will resize. Enter it’s
number. After that, you will be asked to set the new ending point for this
partition. Remember that by default the units are in MB. In our example, we
have set the new partition size to 15 GB:

(parted) resizepart

Partition number? 1
End?  [10.0GB]? 15000

Now verify the results with  "print" :

(parted) print

Verify Linux Resize Partition

6. Delete Linux Partition
The next thing you will learn is how to delete a partition from your hard drive.
To do this, you will need to use the  "rm"  command within parted. To delete a
disk partition you will need to know it’s number.
As mentioned earlier, you can easily obtain this number by using  "print" . In
our example, we will delete the partition with number  1  from our secondary
drive  /dev/sdb1 :
(parted) rm 1

Verify the results by printing the partitions table:

Delete a Linux Partition

7. Rescue Linux Disk Partition

Parted supports a “ rescue"  utility that helps you recover a lost partition
between a starting and ending point. If a partition is found within that range, it
will attempt to restore it.
Here is an example:

(parted) rescue
Start? 1
End? 15000
(parted) print
Model: Unknown (unknown)
Disk /dev/sdb1: 15.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: loop
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Flags
1 0.00B 15.0GB 15.0GB ext4

8 Change Linux Partition Flag

Using parted, you can change the state of a flag for disk partitions. The
supported flags are:

1. boot
2. root
3. swap
4. hidden
5. raid
6. lvm
7. lba
8. legacy_boot
9. irst
10. esp
11. palo
The states can be either  "on"  or  "off" . To change a flag simply
run  "set"  command within parted:
(parted) set 2 lba on

The above command sets  lba  flag to on for second partition. Verify the results
with  print :

Change Partition Flag

Conclusion
Parted is a useful and powerful utility that can help you manage your disk
partitions in Linux systems. As always, when working with disk partitions you
need to be extra careful. It is strongly recommend to go through parted man
pages to learn how you can customize it’s output and find more information
about its capabilities.