How to Expand an Unmounted 160 GB Disk with LVM Without Reboot
Learn step‑by‑step how to identify an unmounted 160 GB disk on a Linux server, create the necessary LVM partitions, extend the volume group and logical volume, and resize the filesystem—all without rebooting—using commands such as df, fdisk, pvcreate, vgextend, lvextend, and xfs_growfs.
A Linux virtual machine showed only about 30 GB free with df -h, but fdisk -l revealed an unused 160 GB disk that needed to be mounted without restarting the system.
What is LVM? Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is a flexible disk management tool that allows administrators to create, resize, and move logical volumes without affecting existing data, and it works without requiring a reboot.
LVM Architecture
Check current disk usage
df -h
Output shows only ~30 GB available.
Inspect disks
fdisk -l
Reveals an unmounted 160 GB disk (/dev/sdb).
Create a new partition of type 8e (LVM)
fdisk /dev/sdb
Create a physical volume
pvcreate /dev/sdb
Output: "Physical volume \"/dev/sdb\" successfully created".
Verify the physical volume
pvdisplay
Extend the volume group
vgextend centos /dev/sdb
Output: "Volume group \"centos\" successfully extended".
Inspect the volume group
vgdisplay
Extend the logical volume
lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/mapper/centos-root
Output confirms the size change from 35.47 GiB to 185.50 GiB and that the logical volume was resized successfully.
Grow the filesystem
xfs_growfs /dev/mapper/centos-root
Verify the final disk space
df -h
The new space is now available.
References: linux.cn article , cnblogs tutorial .
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