PARTED

Section: GNU Parted Manual (8)
Updated: 2007 March 29
Page Index

NAME

parted - a partition manipulation program

SYNOPSIS

parted [options] [device [command [options...]...]]

DESCRIPTION

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

-s, --script

never prompts for user intervention

-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", "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: Display the partition table.
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" 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", "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.
version: Display version information and a copyright message.

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs to <bug-parted@gnu.org>

AUTHOR

This manual page was written by Timshel Knoll <timshel@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).