[CentOS] Reformatting a USB drive

Found this old message about formatting a USB drive and it leaves a few 
questions for me:

I am going to format it as ext3 to keep permissions.  I don't need to 
use this drive on any M$ system.

Do I unmount the drive after inserting it before I issue:

mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1

BTW, when I do a 'man mkfs.ext3' it takes me to the man pages for mke2fs.

After the format is done, do I have to do anything to make sure 
everything is 'written' to the drive before pulling it from the system?

Jim Perrin wrote:
> On 5/24/07, Todd Cary <todd at aristesoftware.com> wrote:
>> I have a USB drive that has been formatted as NTFS.  Can I reformat it?
>> I have identified these properties about it
>>
>> /dev/sda1
>> /media/Extrnl_Bkup
>>
>> Not sure what to do next since the GUI will not mount a NTFS disk
>> (expected).
>
> There are kernel ntfs modules, but really, the most universally
> supported option is to format with vfat. This way it will work on
> windows, mac and linux systems, fully supported all the way around.
> There are some limitations to fat32, 4G file sizes and the like.
>
> The quick and easy way is mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1....tap fingers for a
> minute... then unplug/reinsert.
>
>