How to format hard drive using command line on Lubuntu

On previous article i post about formatting hard drive using tool called 'disks' (gnome disk utility) which is a graphical based tool (GUI), in this article i will show you how to format hard drive using command line.

For people who love using command line, you want everything to be done with command line, including formatting a hard drive, usb stick, sd card, etc.

To format hard drive using command line you can use tool called mkfs, it's already there on your lubuntu installation, so no need to install, you can use it right away.

There are few steps you need to do before running the mkfs command, first you need to know the path of the device that you are going to format, like for example: /dev/sda1, /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdc2, etc.

You can find out the path of the storage device by running df command, like this:

df

kernelpanic@kernelpanic-laptop:~$ df
Filesystem     1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev             2017516         0   2017516   0% /dev
tmpfs             406816      6436    400380   2% /run
/dev/sda6       48270672   3134500  42661116   7% /
tmpfs            2034060     14204   2019856   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs               5120         4      5116   1% /run/lock
tmpfs            2034060         0   2034060   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs             406816        16    406800   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdb1      976758780 886094812  90663968  91% /media/kernelpanic/Elements
/dev/sdc1        1947636         4   1947632   1% /media/kernelpanic/94CB-0533

If the storage device is listed on df command, then must be it is currently mounted, next step you need to un-mount the storage device you are going to format.

Let's say i'm going to format /dev/sdc1 which is my 2GB kingston usb stick memory, to un-mount it i need to run this command:

unmount /dev/sdc1

After the storage device is un-mounted, you can start formatting using mkfs command, here's an example formatting into FAT32 file system.

sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc1

~ happy formatting ~