new 8tb hd, which programm for make a partition on it?

[SarahS93]

Have a new harddrive with 8tb, i will use it to store video files on it.
Do i need a special programm to make a partition on it? i fdisk ok for the job?

[Roman_Gruber]

I think you may use this: https://linux.die.net/man/8/gdisk

This may work too: https://linux.die.net/man/8/fdisk

or parted

or gparted when you want a graphical user interface

[Buffoon]

For a single filesystem I do not partition.

[SarahS93]

What are the pros and contras if i use a partition or not, on a single filesystem?

[NeddySeagoon]

SarahS93,

If you accidentally write a partition table in future, it wall damage your filesystem/data.
A GPT partition table costs you a few MB.

I don't like to mix and match. Its safe to have a partition table, even if its just for one partition.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[frostschutz]

The contra is that some installer / partitioner / bootloader / program might consider the disk free to use for anything if it does not see a partition table on it.

You should always use a partition table, unless you know exactly what you're doing.

Example parted session for creating one full size MiB-aligned partition:

[Buffoon]

Why should I accidentally write a partition table? If I accidentally overwrite an existing partition table how is this better? BTW, fdisk warns you when filesystem signature is found on non-partitioned drive.

[NeddySeagoon]

Buffoon,

Recovering from an overwritten partition table is fairly painless.
None of your data is damaged by overwriting one partition table with another of the same type.

When you lose a chunk of your filesystem superblock at the start of the volume and some random data to the GPT copy at the end of the volume, its a bit more bother.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Buffoon]

Maybe, I have used non-partitioned disks for ages, never found myself accidentally creating partition tables on them.

But I have seen people creating single partitions and misaligning them.

[Hu]

Although OP is probably doing this for personal use on a single-administrator system, the other concern with not having a partition table is that it goes against tradition. Suppose you are currently the only system administrator for an office and you avoid partitions when they are not strictly necessary. At some point, if the office grows, you might have a colleague who is given root. If that colleague is not aware of your practices, he or she might damage the filesystem, or at the very least panic when partitioning tools insist that there is no partition on this drive (because normally that indicates a severe problem, not just a personal choice to break with tradition). You can say that you would make it a point to train that person, and maybe you would, if they happened to hire on while you were still around. If you left for another job, and your old employer later hired someone to fill your role, that person may not be adequately informed about how you ran the office, so they might reasonably fall back on tradition. "Everyone does X, so I will assume that Buffoon did X."

I have been that second hire. I have not broken anything, but it still sucks trying to figure out how my predecessor did something when he did not leave adequate documentation and he broke with tradition, so I cannot reliably guess how he would have done it. In my case, it is not as simple as someone omitting unnecessary partitions, so the observation that it does not take long to investigate how it worked is true, but not helpful because each instance where my predecessor broke with tradition is another place I have to investigate to figure out how he did something, and often why he did it that way instead of the traditional way. If I do not understand why he did it, I risk violating some other assumption if I try to convert it to the traditional method.

[Tony0945]

gparted, I like the graphical tools. Less chance of a typo.

I did this on my 5TB drive. A 1 G EF00 partition and the rest of the drive to a second partition.

So, I wasted 1G. It was a miniscule amount anyway. 0.02%? You can make it smaller if you want.

[Buffoon]

[Hu]

Buffoon: sure, if we can assume that the user will use fdisk interactively, and that fdisk knows the signature of the filesystem on the device (does it know all the exotic filesystems? does it know the non-filesystem containers like LVM, LUKS, etc.?), and that the user will respond to the warning by not writing the partition table over the superblock of the filesystem. If any of those three assumptions fail, there is a good chance that the user will corrupt the superblock, possibly causing data loss. The alternative is to waste a small amount of space with an unnecessary partition that spans the whole drive. Given the amount of waste versus the size of the drive, I would choose the waste unless I was certain nobody else will ever touch this drive and that I would always remember what I had done. Personally, I am willing to take that risk. Acting as someone who posts advice to others, I am not willing to advise others to take that risk.

[Buffoon]

Point taken. However, I think it is fair to let people know the partition is not needed. It requires a little out of box thinking, majority of users seem to be locked into believing a partition is necessary.

[frostschutz]

[Buffoon]

In situation where you are the second person and the first person is gone (as described by Hu above) you pay attention. In case you miss the warning and cannot figure out how the drive is used you have got wrong job. What about RAID drives, there may be no partition table either if RAID is created on bare drives and the partition table is on RAID volume instead? Go ahead panicking and destroy the RAID?

So you recommend highly to use partition table.

I recommend highly not to use partition table.

Now what?

There are basic utilities that can tell you all you need to know (again, if you do not know how to use them you've got wrong job):

[frostschutz]

[Buffoon]

What's Win10? It is not in portage.

I have to say there is no really valid argument pro partitioning in this thread.

How about this one: Floppy disks became extinct because they were used without partition table?

[Hu]

[Buffoon]

Unaware user has no business messing with hard drives at admin level.

Same goes for stupid program. It requires root access to do the damage.

If you run untested scripts on unknown hardware as root you deserve whatever is coming to you.

I created a RAIDZ2 array. Tell me why should I have partitioned the drives first? What script is coming to eat my RAID alive without asking me?

[Hu]

The Windows 10 installer, as frostschutz said above, would eat those drives. You may consider it a stupid program, but it is easy to get, easy to start, and will readily cause major data loss in your recommended configuration. I am pretty sure Microsoft tested the Windows 10 installer before releasing it. Users will, whether rightly or not, assume that an installer from a well known source will meet certain minimum safety standards. Would you say it is a bug in the Windows 10 installer that it will overwrite your drives?

[axl]

[axl]

mkfs.xfs /dev/large_disk and just enjoy. xfs is very good at large chunks of data. is just wonderful. you dont even need partitions. linux is awesum. use the whole disk.

you only need partitions if those disks are involved in boot or multi operating systems situations. most disk dont even need a partition table. one layer of nothingness.

just xfs that drive

[frostschutz]

[Tony0945]