Change disk type from Microsoft Basic to Linux filesystem

Question

I'm not clear where this is coming from and although it seems cosmetic I would like to change my disk type from Microsoft Basic to Linux filesystem

    WARNING: fdisk GPT support is currently new, and therefore in an experimental phase. Use at your own discretion.

Disk /dev/sda: 50.0 GB, 50010783744 bytes, 97677312 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 1048576 bytes
Disk label type: gpt
Disk identifier: 5E29C82B-93C9-47D8-B99C-A8DD0C1A2970


#         Start          End    Size  Type            Name
 1         2048       411647    200M  EFI System      EFI System Partition
 2       411648     17188863      8G  Linux swap
 3     17188864     97675263   38.4G  Microsoft basic

Answer 1

Yes, for Linux that is entirely cosmetic.

The Type field is based on the partition type GUIDs in your GPT partition table, and there is a lot of possible types.

Changing the partition type GUID using Linux fdisk should not change the contents of the partition in any way. But based on the WARNING message, your version of fdisk seems to be a bit old, so you might want to be careful and take backups of any critical data first.

Basically what you'd need to do is:

# fdisk /dev/sda
[...]
Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-3, default 3): 3
Hex code (type L to list all codes): L

<A long list is displayed...> 
<Find the correct short code matching the "Linux filesystem" type GUID>

Hex code (type L to list all codes: <type the short code here>
Command (m for help): w

Your version of fdisk may have some differences. This example was produced using:

# fdisk --version
fdisk from util-linux 2.29.2