Which command initially prepares a disk to be used by LVM by creating a new physical volume on /dev/sdb1?

• A. pvdisplay /dev/sdb1
• B. vgcreate vg_data /dev/sdb1
• C. pvcreate /dev/sdb1
• D. lvcreate -n lv_home vg_name /dev/sdb1

Answer: (C)

To use LVM, you must first turn a block device or partition into a physical volume. This is done with pvcreate on /dev/sdb1, which initializes LVM metadata on that device and marks it as available for use by LVM. Once a physical volume exists, you can create a volume group with vgcreate and then allocate logical volumes with lvcreate.

The other commands serve different roles: pvdisplay only shows information about an existing physical volume; vgcreate needs a physical volume to build a volume group from, and lvcreate creates a logical volume inside an existing volume group. Hence, the initial preparation step is pvcreate /dev/sdb1.