How to mount a partition from a large disk (above 1TB) that has an EFI GPT partition table instead of the conventional MBR (Master Boot Record) partition table. A large disk means a hard drive that is 1 Terabyte or more. EFI stands for Extensible Firmware Interface. GPT is short for Globally Unique Identifier Partition Table.
First Step)
Check the kernel was compiled with EFI support. The standard kernel with Ubuntu/Debian/CentOSĀ 5+ comes with EFI support built-in
cat /boot/config-2.6.26-2-686 | grep EFI
(Change the version number with yours in /boot/config-*)
if the kernel was compiled with EFI support if you get these lines:
CONFIG_EFI=y CONFIG_FB_EFI=y CONFIG_EFI_VARS=m CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
Then type
fdisk -l
(to check the device name in /dev)
fdisk -l /dev/sda
(if the device is at sda, replace with the one you saw when you typed fdisk -l)
parted /dev/sda print
Ok we got the filesystem with the above command, now lets mount it!
mkdir /mnt/test mount -t ext3 /dev/sda2 /mnt/test
(if the file system is ext3, it will be displayed when you type “parted /dev/sda print”, if device is at /dev/sda)
Hope this helps