Formating Devices

I'm a new bie in Linux and I'm trying to format a simple removable device. How do I format and repair harddisks and other removable devices in Linux?

Hi. First you have to figure what kind of file system you want to create. Then open a console and log as root ( su and password) then perform the command fdisk -l so you can know the device mode of the disk you want to format. It will be like /dev/sdb. Now umount this device: umount /dev/sdb1 (this is only an example!) And if you want to make a vfat file system perform the command: mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1. If you want to check the file system the command is fsck.vfat /dev/sdb1. Hope this helps

You can use the graphical suse tool: YaST -> Sytem -> Partitioner

Alternatively, if you are comfortable with CLI commands, then

fdisk -l (to get a list of storage device partitions)

Then you can create, edit, and delete partitions on a given device with

fdisk <device> (for example fdisk /dev/sdb)

More info for you to read here.

After you have created a partition, you need to format it with the mkfs command.