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I am running Ubuntu 18.04 on a server which at present only uses the system SSD for file storage. I have now connected a SATA HDD of 16TB which fdisk recognises at dev/sda as 14.6TiB. System disk appears to be named /dev/mapper/sda3_crypt(it is encrypted).

I am new to this and am wondering how to best install this new drive. Should I partition it into several different partitions? Should I use fdisk at its maximum 2G, or go for parted or something else?

Where and how in the file structure is it common practice to mount storage drives such as this one?

Simon Lindgren
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    This depends exclusively on your use-case. With modern filesystems supporting large disks and partitions, it's up to you (or your services' needs). – Lenniey Oct 25 '19 at 14:07
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    Fdisk does not have a 2gig limit. (A 2tb limit for versions requiring an MBR). Are you planning on wiping the current disk, and ate you sure SDA is the HDD not the SSD (its possible, but less likely then SDB). Have you looked at LVM? (Logical volume management - best of both worlds) – davidgo Oct 26 '19 at 05:44

2 Answers2

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Should I partition it into several different partitions?

Unless you have some weird requirement then no, just one big partition will be fine.

Should I use fdisk at its maximum 2G, or go for parted or something else?

Go for parted, one big GPT partition, why make life hard for yourself.

Chopper3
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    i agree with @chopper3 one is enough in case you dont need it and thats the usually case, however remind to keep your data safe as 16tb are a lot of data that can be messed up – djdomi Oct 25 '19 at 16:27
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Create a LVM volume group on the entire unpartitioned disk, vgcreate datavg /dev/sdb or whatever the device is named. Create and extend logical volumes as needed out of this VG.

Yes, you can partition. Yes, you can create file systems on non-LVM volumes. However, LVM is great making pools of storage out of drives, and has some useful features.

John Mahowald
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