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How to format a USB drive

Insert your USB drive and use lsblk to find the USB drive device name. In this example, the device name is "sda" and there's a partition with the device name "sda1".

edee$ lsblk | grep "NAME\|disk\|part"
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda           8:0    1  28.7G  0 disk
└─sda1        8:1    1  28.7G  0 part /media/erikstaats/6E6D-A430
nvme0n1     259:0    0   477G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
└─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0 476.4G  0 part /
edee$

Before formatting the drive, all mountpoints must be unmounted.

edee$ df | grep "Filesystem\|sda"
Filesystem     1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1       30017184   11872  30005312   1% /media/erikstaats/6E6D-A430
edee$ sudo umount /dev/sda1
edee$

Use dd with device /dev/sda to zero out the drive.

edee$ time (sudo dd status=progress if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4k && sync)
30742802432 bytes (31 GB, 29 GiB) copied, 1438 s, 21.4 MB/s
dd: error writing '/dev/sda': No space left on device
7507969+0 records in
7507968+0 records out
30752636928 bytes (31 GB, 29 GiB) copied, 1584.72 s, 19.4 MB/s

real    26m24.730s
user    0m3.958s
sys     0m51.733s
edee$

Use fdisk to create a partition table and add a partition. In this example, the "o" command is used to create a DOS partition table.

The "n" command is used to create a new partition. The default partition options will create a partition filling the entire storage.

Finally, the "w" command is used to write the partition table and exit.

edee$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.31.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

Device does not contain a recognized partition table.
Created a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x1d7f0292.

Command (m for help): o
Created a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0xfcc2488f.

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
   p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
   e   extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p):

Using default response p.
Partition number (1-4, default 1):
First sector (2048-60063743, default 2048):
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-60063743, default 60063743):

Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 28.7 GiB.

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

edee$ lsblk | grep "NAME\|disk\|part"
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda           8:0    1  28.7G  0 disk
└─sda1        8:1    1  28.7G  0 part
nvme0n1     259:0    0   477G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
└─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0 476.4G  0 part /
edee$

Use mkfs.vfat to format the partition for FAT format. Use the "-F 32" option to format for FAT32.

edee$ sudo mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sda1
mkfs.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
edee$

Use mlabel to set the drive label.

edee$ sudo mlabel -i /dev/sda1 ::"Eriks Drive"
edee$

Eject, remove, and reinsert the drive.

edee$ sudo eject /dev/sda1
edee$ lsblk | grep "NAME\|disk\|part"
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda           8:0    1  28.7G  0 disk
└─sda1        8:1    1  28.7G  0 part /media/erikstaats/ERIKS DRIVE
nvme0n1     259:0    0   477G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
└─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0 476.4G  0 part /
edee$
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