How do you format a hard drive with ubuntu?

Answer 1

The question is slightly ambiguous.

A hard drive is a physical device which reads and writes blocks of data. The drive itself can not be a Linux hard drive, or a Windows hard drive, it simply deals in blocks.

The file system on the hard drive however can be created by several operating systems; Linux, Windows, Mac OSX as well as many others. The file systems are mostly incompatible between operating systems.

For example.

Windows can read and write NTFS but in general not ext3fs.

Linux can read and write ext3fs but in general not NTFS.

Any drive formatted for one file system can be re-formatted to another file system by any operating system which supports the drive hardware. So to re-format a Linux (e.g. ext3fs) formatted drive, simply treat it as a blank drive and follow the Windows instructions for formatting a drive. It's important to note that when you re-format a drive, any data on it is overwritten and lost.

If you want to know how to format an ext3fs (Linux file system) on a drive while using Windows. The short answer is you can't. In general operating systems are unable to format drives for non native file systems. Even when drivers are available so it can be read and written to, it's generally still not possible to format the drive.

that is:

Windows cannot format a drive with a Linux file system (e.g. ext3)

Linux cannot format a drive with a Windows file system (e.g. ntfs)

If you simply want to share files between a Linux and Windows system though, there are some file systems which both operating systems can read and write to. FAT and FAT32 are the most commonly used examples. This file system is very old, limited and doesn't support most modern features but is compatible across many if not most operating systems.

Answer 2

Formatting a hard drive with Linux installed is no different than formatting any other hard drive. If you want to completely format the hard drive, you may insert an installation CD of pretty much any operating system, and as part of the install process you are given the option of formatting the hard drive.

You can also use GParted, which is a great Linux native partition editor and with it you can format partitions to either Ext. 2, Ext. 3, Ext. 4, or Linux Swap partitions, all of which are Linux formats.

Answer 3

There is a fdisk - Partition table manipulator for Linux which you can use to create partitions in linux.

If you want to format it for a particular file system then you can use the mkfs program.

Example:

1. To format as reiser FS

sudo mkfs.reiserfs /dev/sda1

2. To format as ext3 FS

sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1

Answer 4

You use a partition editor like fdisk, cfdisk, or gparted to delete a partition (If any.), specify a new partition, including its type, then you'll use the utilities native to the filesystem you want to create.

For example, I want to format a piece of my hard disk to ext4:

1. I'll run gparted, and either delete a partition I don't want, resize a partition I do want that can spare the size, or I completely delete everything on my target medium.

2. I then tell gparted I want to create an ext4 partition and how big it will be.

3. gparted will actually handle all these steps for you. Resizing partitions and filesystems, creating new partitions and setting their flags properly, and invoking mke2fs to do the actual format needed to make the filesystem usable.

Answer 5

To format a drive in command prompt. Open Command prompt with administrator privilege and type the Format Drive letter Type of file system then parameter.

like

FORMAT D: /FS:NTFS /Q To format D drive in NTFS file system.

FORMAT D: /FS:Fat /Q To format D drive in Fat file syste.

Answer 6

Open up "Disk Utility" in System>Administration. Then, select the partition you want to format. Click the button that says "format".