[CentOS] How to format a USB drive?

Thu Jun 2 16:47:59 UTC 2011
Ljubomir Ljubojevic <office at plnet.rs>

Robert Heller wrote:
> 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
> 

Who is that "sudo" guy you keep writing about: ;-) RHEL, RHEL, RHEL, not 
debian.

Ljubomir