Parted

Related articles
fdisk
gdisk
Partitioning
GNU Parted
is a program for creating and manipulating partition tables. GParted is a GUI frontend.
Installation
Install
one of the following packages:
parted
– command-line only.
gparted
– a graphical front-end for
parted
.
Note
The
xorg-xhost
optional dependency is needed for running GParted
as root on Wayland
.
[1]
Usage
Parted has two modes: command line and interactive. Parted should always be started with:
# parted
device
where
device
is
block device
name like
/dev/sda
,
/dev/nvme0n1
,
/dev/mmcblk0
, etc. If you omit the
device
argument,
parted
will attempt to guess which device you want.
Command line mode
In command line mode, this is followed by one or more commands. For example:
# parted /dev/sda --script mklabel gpt mkpart P1 ext3 1MiB 8MiB
Note
Options (like
--help
) can only be specified on the command line.
Interactive mode
Interactive mode simplifies the partitioning process and reduces unnecessary repetition by automatically applying all partitioning commands to the specified device.
In order to start operating on a device, execute:
# parted /dev/sd
x
You will notice that the command-line prompt changes from a hash (
#
) to
(parted)
: this also means that the new prompt is not a command to be manually entered when running the commands in the examples.
To see a list of the available commands, enter:
(parted) help
When finished, or if wishing to implement a partition table or scheme for another device, exit from parted with:
(parted) quit
After exiting, the command-line prompt will change back to
#
.
If you do not give a parameter to a command, Parted will prompt you for it. For example:
(parted) mklabel
New disk label type? gpt
Rounding
Since many partitioning systems have complicated constraints, Parted will usually do something slightly different to what you asked. (For example, create a partition starting at 10.352Mb, not 10.4Mb) If the calculated values differ too much, Parted will ask you for confirmation.  If you know exactly what you want, or to see exactly what Parted is doing, it helps to specify partition endpoints in sectors (with the "s" suffix) and give the "unit s" command so that the partition endpoints are displayed in sectors.
As of parted-2.4, when you specify start and/or end values using IEC binary units like “MiB”, “GiB”, “TiB”, etc., parted treats those values as exact, and equivalent to the same number specified in bytes (i.e., with the “B” suffix), in that it provides no “helpful” range of sloppiness. Contrast that with a partition start request of “4GB”, which may actually resolve to some sector up to 500MB before or after that point. Thus, when creating a partition, you should prefer to specify units of bytes (“B”), sectors (“s”), or IEC binary units like “MiB”, but not “MB”, “GB”, etc.
Partitioning
Create new partition table
Warning
If you create a new partition table on a disk with data on it, it will erase all the data on the disk. Make sure this is what you want to do.
Tip
Check that your NVMe drives and Advanced Format hard disk drives are using the
optimal logical sector size
before partitioning.
Consider performing
SSD memory cell clearing
before partitioning an SSD.
You need to (re)create the partition table of a device when it has never been partitioned before, or when you want to change the type of its partition table. Recreating the partition table of a device is also useful when the partition scheme needs to be restructured from scratch.
Open each device whose partition table must be (re)created with:
# parted /dev/sd
x
To then create a new
GUID Partition Table
, use the following command:
(parted) mklabel gpt
To create a new
Master Boot Record
/MS-DOS partition table instead, use:
(parted) mklabel msdos
Partition schemes
This article or section needs expansion.
Reason:
Replace all percentages with explicit MiB aligned sizes to prevent
alignment issues
. Also warn about the issues. (Discuss in
Talk:Installation guide#Remove parted
)
You can decide the number and size of the partitions the devices should be split into, and which directories will be used to mount the partitions in the installed system (also known as
mount points
). See
Partitioning#Partition scheme
for the required partitions.
The following command will be used to create partitions:
(parted) mkpart
part-type-or-part-label
fs-type
start
end
part-type-or-part-label
is interpreted differently based on the partition table:
MBR: the parameter is interpreted as
part-type
, which can be one of
primary
,
extended
or
logical
.
GPT: the parameter is interpreted as
part-label
, which sets the
PARTLABEL
attribute of the partition. To avoid setting a partition label, pass an empty quoted string (
""
).
Note
Many tutorials on the web use commands which start with
mkpart primary
even for GPT. They are wrong, this would set "primary" as the partition label.
fs-type
is an identifier chosen among those listed by entering
help mkpart
as the closest match to the file system that you will use. The
mkpart
command does not actually create the file system: the
fs-type
parameter will simply be used by
parted
to set
partition type GUID
for GPT partitions or
partition type ID
for MBR partitions.
Tip
parted
maps types named after Linux native file systems to the same "Linux filesystem" partition type (GUID
0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4
or ID
0x83
), so it is perfectly safe to e.g. use
ext2
for an
ext4
-formatted partition.
When using GPT, it is advised to follow the
Discoverable Partitions Specification
since
systemd-gpt-auto-generator
can automount them. The EFI system partition, XBOOTLDR partition, swap partition and home partition types can be changed using the
set command
, while for the root partition and others, you will need to specify the partition type UUID manually with the
type
command.
start
is the beginning of the partition from the start of the device. It consists of a number followed by a
unit
, for example
1MiB
means start at 1 MiB.
end
is the end of the partition from the start of the device (
not
from the
start
value). It has the same syntax as
start
, for example
100%
means end at the end of the device (use all the remaining space).
Tip
On a disk with a MBR partition table leave at least 33 512-byte sectors (16.5 KiB) of free unpartitioned space at the end of the disk to allow
converting between MBR and GPT
.
If you do not want to leave unused space in the device, make sure that each partition starts where the previous one ends.
Note
parted
does not support specifying the start and end of a partition relative to the previous partition. See
bug #59176
and
bug #55841
.
parted
may issue a warning like:
Warning: The resulting partition is not properly aligned for best performance.
Ignore/Cancel?
In this case, read
Partitioning#Partition alignment
and follow
#Alignment
to fix it.
The following command will be used to flag the partition that contains the
/boot
directory as bootable:
(parted) set
partition
boot on
partition
is the number of the partition to be flagged (see the output of the
print
command).
esp
is an alias for
boot
on GPT.
[2]
legacy_boot
sets the Legacy BIOS Bootable attribute. This attribute is used by
syslinux
[3]
and other software that has a traditional PC-AT BIOS firmware implementation.
[4]
This article or section needs expansion.
Reason:
Explain the
boot
,
legacy_boot
and
esp
flags and their different usage on MBR and GPT. (Discuss in
Talk:Parted
)
UEFI/GPT examples
In every instance, a special bootable
EFI system partition
is required.
If creating a new EFI system partition, use the following commands (the recommended size is at least 1 GiB):
(parted) mkpart "EFI system partition" fat32 1MiB 1025MiB
(parted) set 1 esp on
The remaining partition scheme is entirely up to you. For one root partition using 100% of remaining space:
(parted) mkpart "root partition" ext4 1025MiB 100%
(parted) type 2 4F68BCE3-E8CD-4DB1-96E7-FBCAF984B709
For separate swap (4 GiB) and
/
(all remaining space) partitions:
(parted) mkpart "swap partition" linux-swap 1025MiB 5121MiB
(parted) mkpart "root partition" ext4 5121MiB 100%
(parted) type 3 4F68BCE3-E8CD-4DB1-96E7-FBCAF984B709
And for separate swap (4 GiB),
/
(32 GiB) and
/home
(all remaining space) partitions:
(parted) mkpart "swap partition" linux-swap 1025MiB 5121MiB
(parted) mkpart "root partition" ext4 5121MiB 37889MiB
(parted) type 3 4F68BCE3-E8CD-4DB1-96E7-FBCAF984B709
(parted) mkpart "home partition" ext4 37889MiB 100%
(parted) set 4 linux-home on
BIOS/MBR examples
For a minimum single primary partition using all available disk space, the following command would be used:
(parted) mkpart primary ext4 1MiB 100%
(parted) set 1 boot on
In the following instance, a 4 GiB swap partition will be created, followed by a
/
partition using all the remaining space:
(parted) mkpart primary linux-swap 1MiB 4097MiB
(parted) mkpart primary ext4 4097MiB 100%
(parted) set 2 boot on
In the final example below, separate
/boot
(1 GiB), swap (4 GiB),
/
(32 GiB), and
/home
(all remaining space) partitions will be created:
(parted) mkpart primary ext4 1MiB 1025MiB
(parted) set 1 boot on
(parted) set 1 bls_boot on
(parted) mkpart primary linux-swap 1025MiB 5121MiB
(parted) mkpart primary ext4 5121MiB 37889MiB
(parted) mkpart primary ext4 37889MiB 100%
Resizing partitions
Warning
ext2/3/4 partitions that are being resized must be unmounted and not in use. It is difficult and hazardous to try to edit the root filesystem on a running OS; use a live media/rescue system instead.
Note
You can only move the end of the partition with
parted
.
As of parted v3.2
resizepart
may need the use of
#Interactive mode
.
[5]
These instructions apply to partitions that have ext2, ext3, ext4, or btrfs filesystems.
If you are growing a partition, you have to first resize the partition and then resize the filesystem on it, while for shrinking the filesystem must be resized before the partition to avoid data loss.
Growing partitions
To grow a partition (in parted interactive mode):
(parted) resizepart
number
end
Where
number
is the number of the partition you are growing, and
end
is the new end of the partition (which needs to be larger than the old end).
Then, to grow the (ext2/3/4) filesystem on the partition (if
size
is not specified, it will default to the size of the partition):
# resize2fs /dev/
sdaX
size
Or to grow a Btrfs filesystem:
# btrfs filesystem resize
size
/path/to/mount/point
Where
/path/to/mount/point
stands for the mount point of the partition you are growing, and
size
in the form
16G
or
+1G
is the new size or modification of the partition. Use
max
to fill the remaining space on the partition.
Shrinking partitions
To shrink an ext2/3/4 filesystem on the partition:
# resize2fs /dev/
sdaX
size
Note
In contrast to parted,
resize2fs(8)
uses K, M, G and T to mean KiB, MiB, GiB and TiB. Be aware that
e2fsprogs
documentation misrefers to kibibytes, mebibytes, gibibytes and tebibytes as "power-of-two  kilobytes,  megabytes,  gigabytes,  terabytes".
To shrink a Btrfs filesystem:
# btrfs filesystem resize
size
/path/to/mount/point
Where
/path/to/mount/point
stands for the mount point of the partition you are shrinking, and
size
is the new size of the partition.
Then shrink the partition (in parted interactive mode):
(parted) resizepart
number
end
Where
number
is the number of the partition you are shrinking, and
end
is the new end of the partition (which needs to be smaller than the old end).
When done, use the
resizepart
command from
util-linux
to tell the kernel about the new size:
# resizepart
device
number
size
Where
device
is the device that holds the partition,
number
is the number of the partition and
size
is the new size of the partition, in 512-byte sectors.
Known issues
Parted will always warn you before doing something that is potentially dangerous, unless the command is one of those that is inherently dangerous (e.g.
rm
,
mklabel
and
mkpart
).
Alignment
Warning
parted
only aligns the partition start, but not the size. This is not enough for dm-crypt/LUKS, see
Advanced Format#Partition alignment
.
When creating a partition,
parted
might warn about improper partition alignment but does not hint about proper alignment. For example:
(parted) mkpart primary fat16 0 32M
Warning: The resulting partition is not properly aligned for best performance.
Ignore/Cancel?
The warning means the partition start is not aligned. Enter "Ignore" to go ahead anyway, print the partition table in sectors to see where it starts, and remove/recreate the partition with the start sector rounded up to increasing powers of 2 until the warning stops. As one example, on a flash drive with 512B sectors, Parted wanted partitions to start on sectors that were a multiple of 2048, which is 1 MiB alignment.
If you want
parted
to attempt to calculate the correct alignment for you, specify the start position as 0% instead of some concrete value. To make one large ext4 partition, your command would look like this:
(parted) mkpart primary ext4 0% 100%
Tips and tricks
Check alignment
Warning
parted
only verifies the alignment of a partition start, but not the size. This is not enough for dm-crypt/LUKS, see
Advanced Format#Partition alignment
.
On an already partitioned disk, you can use
parted
to verify the alignment of a partition on a device. For instance, to verify alignment of partition 1 on
/dev/sda
:
# parted /dev/sda
(parted) align-check optimal 1
1 aligned
See also
GNU parted - Parted User's Manual
How to align partitions for best performance using parted
Resize an ext3/ext4 partition