The disk is mounted and seems to be working properly. In fact, I have about 800GB of data on it.

fdisk tells me this:


"Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table"

Is this a problem?

When I created the filesystem, I think I did a mkfs .../dev/sdb

Should I have instead used sdb1?

Thanks

Hi vihag,

Welcome to LQ!!!

How did you create the partition. I mean using disk druid at the time of install or later using fdisk or parted.

If you created the partition using parted then it is normal that you get such warning because both tool works do the same thing but in a different way.

I doubt that you ran mkfs /dev/sdb because that will not work.

Yes, it will work. You don't need to make partitions to make a filesystem on a disk, although it is recommended.

To the OP: While the approach to use the entire disk without partitions is rather unusual there should be no problems with it, except for some programs that don't expect it to be that way. Make sure that you don't let those programs alter anything on the disk, or you may loose your data.
I personally don't like this approach, I would make a backup of that data, repartition the drive and then put a new filesystem on the partition, not the whole disk. But this is just my opinion, if it works for you then use it that way.

1 members found this post helpful.

I will back everything up and recreate it. I didn't create a partition. I'm a Linux CLI amateur and I thought mkfs would take care of that, or at least complain if everything wasn't in order.

Thanks for the info.

It does war you before you try to run mkfs on the device itself. See below:

Hello,

I'm using this:

* After creating the partition of course.