Ubuntu Linux Bible, 11th Edition

CHAPTER 12Managing Disks and Filesystems

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Creating disk partitions
• Creating logical volumes with LVM
• Adding filesystems
• Mounting filesystems
• Unmounting filesystems

Your operating system, applications, and data need to be kept on some kind of permanent storage so that when you turn your computer off and then on again, it is all still there. Traditionally, that storage has been provided by a hard disk in your computer. To organize the information on that disk, the disk is usually divided into partitions, with most partitions given a structure referred to as a filesystem.

This chapter describes how to work with hard drives. Hard drive tasks include partitioning, adding filesystems, and managing those filesystems in various ways. Storage devices that are attached to the systems such as removable devices, including hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs), and network devices can be partitioned and managed in the same ways.

After covering basic partitions, I describe how Logical Volume Manager (LVM) can be used to make it easier to grow, shrink, and otherwise manage filesystems more efficiently.

Understanding Disk Storage

The basics of how data storage works are the same in most modern operating systems. When you install the operating system, the disk is divided into one or more partitions. Each partition is formatted with a filesystem. In the case of Linux, some of the partitions may be specially formatted for elements such as swap area or ...