NVMe Partitioning and Disk Tools

NVMe Partitioning and Disk Tools | Generated by AI

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Question: What is lsblk, how do I partition a disk when installing Fedora, what disk tools exist, and why does an NVMe drive (e.g. nvme0n1) appear split into multiple devices?

Answer:

You probably mean lsblk (“list block devices”), not lbdisk. It shows the tree of block devices and how they’re sliced.

lsblk
# NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
# nvme0n1     259:0    0 931.5G  0 disk
# ├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   600M  0 part /boot/efi
# ├─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0     1G  0 part /boot
# └─nvme0n1p3 259:3    0 929.9G  0 part /

NVMe naming — why it looks “split”

The naming encodes the NVMe topology, not multiple disks:

nvme0  n1   p3
 │     │    └─ partition 3
 │     └────── namespace 1
 └──────────── controller 0 (the physical SSD)

nvme0 = the controller (one physical SSD).
n1 = namespace 1. NVMe drives expose storage as namespaces; consumer SSDs almost always have exactly one (n1). Enterprise drives can carve one SSD into several namespaces, which then look like separate disks (nvme0n1, nvme0n2).
p1/p2/p3 = partitions inside that namespace.

So nvme0n1p1 … p3 is one SSD, one namespace, three partitions. Compare to SATA where it’d be sda → sda1, sda2, sda3. The “extra” letters (n1) are the only difference. You’re seeing partitioning, not multiple disks.

What partitioning actually is

A partition is just a contiguous byte range recorded in a partition table (GPT on modern UEFI systems). The kernel reads the GPT header at the start of the disk and creates the pN device nodes. Nothing is physically segmented — it’s metadata pointing at offsets.

A typical Fedora UEFI layout:

Partition	Size	FS	Mount	Purpose
p1	~600M	FAT32	`/boot/efi`	EFI System Partition (bootloader)
p2	~1G	ext4	`/boot`	kernel + initramfs
p3	rest	btrfs	`/`	root (Fedora default is btrfs)

Fedora’s default also puts /home, /, and others as btrfs subvolumes inside p3 rather than separate partitions — flexible, no fixed size split.

Partitioning during Fedora install (Anaconda)

In the installer: Installation Destination → Storage Configuration.

Automatic — Anaconda creates the ESP + /boot + btrfs root for you. Pick this unless you have a reason not to.
Custom — you define mount points; it builds partitions/subvolumes.
Advanced (Blivet-GUI) — raw partition editor, full manual control.

Partitioning from the CLI

If you want to do it by hand (or scripted), the modern tools:

# Inspect
lsblk -f                      # devices + filesystems + UUIDs
sudo fdisk -l /dev/nvme0n1    # partition table dump

# GPT partitioning, scriptable
sudo sgdisk -n 1:0:+600M -t 1:ef00 /dev/nvme0n1   # ESP
sudo sgdisk -n 2:0:+1G   -t 2:8300 /dev/nvme0n1   # /boot
sudo sgdisk -n 3:0:0     -t 3:8300 /dev/nvme0n1   # root, rest of disk

# Interactive alternatives
sudo gdisk /dev/nvme0n1       # GPT-aware fdisk
sudo cfdisk /dev/nvme0n1      # curses TUI, easiest interactive
sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1      # supports resize, scripting

# Format
sudo mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p2
sudo mkfs.btrfs /dev/nvme0n1p3

sgdisk partition type codes worth knowing: ef00 = EFI System, 8300 = Linux filesystem, 8200 = swap, 8e00 = LVM.

Key thing for your mental model: the “multiple disks” appearance under one NVMe is just controller → namespace → partitions. One SSD, sliced by a GPT table. If you ever see nvme0n2, that’s a genuinely separate namespace, which only enterprise/datacenter drives expose.

References:

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