parted8

Usage

Overview

parted is a program to manipulate disk partitions. It supports multiple partition table formats, including MS-DOS and GPT. It is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganising disk usage, and copying data to new hard disks.

This manual page documents parted briefly. Complete documentation is distributed with the package in GNU Info format.

Options

-h, --help

displays a help message

-l, --list

lists partition layout on all block devices

-m, --machine

displays machine parseable output

-j, --json

displays JSON output

-s, --script

never prompts for user intervention. Automatically answers 'NO' if a warning is encountered, eg. when shrinking a partition.

-f, --fix

automatically answer "fix" to exceptions in script mode

-v, --version

displays the version

-a alignment-type, --align alignment-type

Set alignment for newly created partitions, valid alignment types are:

none

Use the minimum alignment allowed by the disk type.

cylinder

Align partitions to cylinders.

minimal

Use minimum alignment as given by the disk topology information. This and the opt value will use layout information provided by the disk to align the logical partition table addresses to actual physical blocks on the disks. The min value is the minimum alignment needed to align the partition properly to physical blocks, which avoids performance degradation.

optimal

Use optimum alignment as given by the disk topology information. This aligns to a multiple of the physical block size in a way that guarantees optimal performance.

Commands

[device]

The block device to be used. When none is given, parted will use the first block device it finds.

[command [options]]

Specifies the command to be executed. If no command is given, parted will present a command prompt. Possible commands are:

help [command]

Print general help, or help on command if specified.

align-check type partition

Check if partition satisfies the alignment constraint of type. type must be "minimal" or "optimal".

mklabel label-type

Create a new disklabel (partition table) of label-type. label-type should be one of "aix", "amiga", "bsd", "dvh", "gpt", "loop", "mac", "msdos", "pc98", or "sun".

mkpart [part-type name fs-type] start end

Create a new partition. part-type may be specified only with msdos and dvh partition tables, it should be one of "primary", "logical", or "extended". name is required for GPT partition tables and fs-type is optional. fs-type can be one of "btrfs", "exfat", "ext2", "ext3", "ext4", "fat16", "fat32", "hfs", "hfs+", "linux-swap", "ntfs", "reiserfs", "udf", or "xfs".

name partition name

Set the name of partition to name. This option works only on Mac, PC98, and GPT disklabels. The name can be placed in double quotes, if necessary. And depending on the shell may need to also be wrapped in single quotes so that the shell doesn't strip off the double quotes.

print print-type

Display the partition table. print-type is optional, and can be one of devices, free, list, or all.

quit

Exit from parted.

rescue start end

Rescue a lost partition that was located somewhere between start and end. If a partition is found, parted will ask if you want to create an entry for it in the partition table.

resizepart partition end

Change the end position of partition. Note that this does not modify any filesystem present in the partition.

rm partition

Delete partition.

select device

Choose device as the current device to edit. device should usually be a Linux hard disk device, but it can be a partition, software raid device, or an LVM logical volume if necessary.

set partition flag state

Change the state of the flag on partition to state. Supported flags are: "boot", "root", "swap", "hidden", "raid", "lvm", "lba", "legacy_boot", "irst", "msftres", "esp", "chromeos_kernel", "bls_boot", "linux-home", "no_automount", "bios_grub", and "palo". state should be either "on" or "off".

unit unit

Set unit as the unit to use when displaying locations and sizes, and for interpreting those given by the user when not suffixed with an explicit unit. unit can be one of "s" (sectors), "B" (bytes), "kB", "MB", "KiB", "MiB", "GB", "GiB", "TB", "TiB", "%" (percentage of device size), "cyl" (cylinders), "chs" (cylinders, heads, sectors), or "compact" (megabytes for input, and a human-friendly form for output).

toggle partition flag

Toggle the state of flag on partition.

type partition id or uuid

On MS-DOS set the type aka. partition id of partition to id. The id is a value between "0x01" and "0xff". On GPT the type-uuid of partition to uuid.

disk_set flag state

Change a flag on the disk to state. A flag can be either "on" or "off". Some or all of these flags will be available, depending on what disk abel you are using. Supported flags are: "pmbr_boot" on GPT to enable the boot flag on the GPT's protective MBR partition.

disk_toggle flag

Toggle the state of the disk flag.

version

Display version information and a copyright message.

Units

parted will compute sensible ranges for the locations you specify when using units like "GB", "MB", etc. Use the sector unit "s" or IEC binary units like "GiB", "MiB", to specify exact locations. When you specify start 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 in an exact location you should use units of bytes ("B"), sectors ("s"), or IEC binary units like "MiB", "GiB", but not "MB", "GB", etc.