How to Add and Configure a New Disk on a Linux Server (VMware Example)

When a Linux server runs out of disk space, a new disk can be added and prepared for use; the procedure consists of four common steps, with the first step differing between virtual and physical machines, demonstrated here on a VMware VM.

(1) Add Disk

Open the virtual machine settings, click Add → Hard Disk , and follow the wizard to attach the new disk.

(2) Disk Partitioning

After adding the disk, use fdisk -l to list devices; the new disk appears as /dev/sdb and must be partitioned before use.

Proceed with partitioning /dev/sdb as shown in the following screenshots.

After partitioning, the result looks like this:

(3) Formatting

Format the created partition to a filesystem using either of the equivalent commands below:

mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb
# or
mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1

(4) Disk Mounting

After mounting, data can be written to the new disk.

(5) Partitioning Disks Larger Than 2 TB

First, install parted and start it on /dev/sdb :

yum install parted -y
parted /dev/sdb

Convert the MBR disk to GPT:

(parted) mklabel gpt

Create a single partition that uses the whole space (or specify size in TB):

(parted) mkpart primary 0 -1
# or
unit TB
mkpart primary 0 3   # creates a 3 TB primary partition

Verify the partition size:

(parted) print

Exit parted :

(parted) quit

Finally, format the new partition and add it to /etc/fstab for automatic mounting:

mkfs.ext4 -F /dev/sdb1

The same steps apply in production environments; most modern disks support hot‑plug, allowing you to add, partition, format, and mount them without downtime.