The cloud disks created through the console are manually mounted to your CVM and used as data disks in Online status by default. To use the disks, you need to initialize them first, including formatting, partitioning, and creating file systems. The initialization method varies by actual use scenario as shown below:
If the entire disk is presented as one independent partition (that is, there are not multiple logical disks such as D disk/vdb1 and E disk/vdb2), we strongly recommend you not use partitions, and directly create the file system on bare devices.
If the entire disk needs to be presented as multiple logical partitions (that is, there are multiple logical disks), you need to perform the partitioning first, then create the file system on a partition.
Common disk partition styles are Main Boot Record (MBR) and Guid Partition Table (GPT). If the disk partition format is changed after the disk is put into use, original data on the disk will be erased. Therefore, select an appropriate partition style according to actual needs.
Basics of the two partition styles are shown in the following table：
|
| | 4 primary partitions 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition | Windows operating system: Disk management Linux operating system: fdisk tool parted tool |
| 18EB Currently, cloud disk supports a maximum capacity of 32TB | No limit on number of partitions | Windows operating system: Disk managementLinux operating system: parted tool |
Select the appropriate operations guide according to disk capacity and the CVM‘s operating system type:
For disk capacity less than 2TB:
For disk capacity larger than or equal to 2TB: