[CentOS] How to format a USB drive?

Robert Heller heller at deepsoft.com
Thu Jun 2 16:19:47 UTC 2011


At Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:27:00 -0700 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> I have a usb drive, /media/disk and I want to reformat it.  There 
> are several questions that come up:
> 
> How can I determine the current format?
> 
> Do I use the mkfs command?
> 
> Many thanks...
> 
> Todd

Here is a step-by-step explaination (and I am going to give the CLI
method -- *I* don't have a clue about how to do with with the
point-and-click interface):

Fire up an Terminal window (it should be on the right-click menu under
GNome), then in this window type [I will assume you have sudo privs,
otherwise you need to be root (it is not recomended that you actually
log in as root)]

# Get some information about the disk, includes the physical device name
# and its 
/bin/mount | grep /media/disk
# Unmount the disk (be sure to close any open windows relating to the disk)
sudo /bin/umount -v /media/disk
# Format the disk or partition. Replace <type> with the type you want
# (ext2, ext3, vfat, and maybe some others).  Replace <mumble> with the
# device file reported above.
sudo /sbin/mkfs -t <type> /dev/<mumble>

There should be man pages for all of these commands (accessable with
the 'man' command):

man mount
man umount
man mkfs
man sudo

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933 / heller at deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software        -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
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