PV (physical volume)
also: PV
A physical volume (PV) is a raw storage device or partition that has been initialized for use with Logical Volume Manager (LVM), allowing it to be combined with other PVs into volume groups for flexible storage management.
A physical volume is the foundation layer of LVM. It represents an actual block device—such as a hard drive, SSD, USB drive, or a partition on one—that has been labeled with LVM metadata to mark it as usable by the LVM system.
Before a disk or partition can be managed by LVM, it must first be converted into a PV using the pvcreate command. For example: sudo pvcreate /dev/sdb1 prepares that partition to join an LVM setup.
Multiple PVs are then grouped into a volume group (VG), which acts as a storage pool. From that pool, logical volumes (LVs)—which behave like traditional partitions—can be created and resized on demand. This abstraction layer decouples storage from physical hardware, enabling dynamic resizing and easier management.