[sf-lug] how to use fdisk to repartition a 1TB USB hard drive?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting jim (jim at well.com):

>    i got a new 1TB USB stand-alone hard drive with a vfat 
> file system and called itself "My Book". 
>    i figured i'd use fdisk to wipe the existing partition 
> table and make a new 100GB partition, leave the rest raw 
> and make new parts as i see the needs. 
>    i used fdisk, which showed four screwy partitions and 
> then told me the device didn't seem to have a valid 
> partition table, maybe i screwed up. 
>    i ignored fdisk's sarcasm and deleted the four screwy 
> partitions and then made a new 100GB partition. fdisk 
> seemed happy. 
>    partprobe didn't like things. 
>    i rebooted. and then... 
> 
>            It still calls itself "My Book". I'd like to fix that 
>         along with other things. 

You know, if you want to start with a truly wiped disk format, just
write zeroes over the first 512 bytes:

#  dd if=/dev/zero /of=dev/sdb bs=512 count=1

Do that, and every aspect of filesystems, partition tables, volume
labels, etc. is just plain gone.

Now, as to your 1 TB drive, I'm pretty sure it's below the size where
/sbin/fdisk runs out of steam entirely, which I believe doesn't happen
until you try to create a filesystem larger than 1.5 TB, _but_ you
should, IMO, start thinking about using GNU parted instead of
/sbin/fdisk, and maybe also GPT-type partition tables instead of the
default IBM/Microsoft type.

(I have no direct experience, as I don't own any hard drives that big.)

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