partitions

Master Boot Record

See MBR.

Partition Creating

For large 4k drives, to make sure alignment is fine :

parted /dev/sda mklabel gpt
parted /dev/sda mkpart xfs 1M 100%

Partition Cloning

Useful when creating the exact same partitions on multiple identical disks for software RAID :

sfdisk -d /dev/sdc | sfdisk /dev/sdd

Or by saving the output :

sfdisk -d /dev/sdc > part.txt
cat part.txt | sfdisk /dev/sdd

For GPT partition tables, sfdisk does not work, install gdisk and :

sgdisk --backup=sdc.gpt /dev/sdc
sgdisk --load-backup=sdc.gpt /dev/sdd
# If both disks are going to be used, randomize the GUIDs
sgdisk --randomize-guids /dev/sdd