The history and evolution of disk formatting and partitioning in Linux

The history of disk formatting and partitioning in Unix/Linux dates back to the early days of computing when disk storage was a scarce resource. Disk partitioning was essential in organizing disk space into smaller, manageable sections. It allowed system administrators to allocate disk space more efficiently and reduced the risk of data loss in the event of a disk failure. In the early days of Unix, disk partitioning was done using the fdisk command, which allowed the user to create, delete, and modify disk partitions. With the introduction of Linux, the partitioning tool was updated to use the more advanced GUID Partition Table (GPT) format, which provided support for larger disks and more partitions.

Over time, disk formatting and partitioning in Unix/Linux have become more sophisticated, with new commands and utilities being added to improve the process. For instance, the mke2fs command, which is used to create...