Formatting a storage device typically involves the following steps. This article includes the directions for steps 1 and 2.
The fdisk command partitions a drive as MBR (master boot record). The gdisk command partitions a drive as GPT (GUID partition table). The parted command can partition a drive as either MBR or GPT. MBR is typically needed for systems with old hardware or software, because GPT is not backwards compatible with old hardware or software. gdisk or parted can be used if the system is using modern hardware and software. GPT is typically used if you need a create a partition greater than 2 TB.
In this example, we will create a new primary partition on the third storage device /dev/sdc.
Note: Type L and press enter to view all of the available codes
Use the partprobe command to update the system to recongize the new partition.
~]# partprobe