I am using Ubuntu linux and am pretty new I used this command to format a 2nd drive newly added

# sudo mkfs -t ext2 /dev/hdd

and am coming up with this

/dev/hdd is apparently in use by the system; will not make a filesystem here!

is there a way to make it not used by file system or something so that I can format it??

First have you partitioned the drive?
If so then you need to define the partition to format.
sudo mkfs -t ext2 /dev/hdd1
Also the partition can't be already mounted. Must be unmounted to format.

Brian1

If you have just added the disk then you need to partition it first, use
or if that doesn't work fdisk, but cfdisk is easier to use.

and then partition up the drive. If you only need one partition then you can just create it as a single primary partition giving you /dev/hdd1

Okay, is there a code for unmounting a drive then because I had already tried the code brian submitted and because it is mounted it will not let me format it.

(I'll try code that penguinator submit after unmount)
~thanks for the patience

Okay tell me of this code needs to be edited unmount /dev/hdd because I tried this which someone said works and all it is saying command not found...

All of this as root user!

First, type mount

Press enter

Second, look in output of 'mount' for anything related to /dev/hdd

IF you see something related to /dev/hdd (example: /dev/hdd1) THEN:

ELSE, type fdisk /dev/hdd

Press enter

Type p and press enter

Look at output and see if any partitions exist, if so they will be listed as /dev/hdd1 /dev/hdd2 /dev/hdd3 etc... If none exist then you need to create one or more. Otherwise just type q and press enter.

OK, back at command line...

Type mke2fs /dev/hdd1

or for ext3 (journaled) filesystem...

NOTE: Pick ONE of those above...

Press enter

Filesystem will be created.

Now to mount the new filesystem...

press enter

press enter

Done. Research fstab for automounting this partition and what-not

press enter

Thank you much ScottReed but now that it's there I access it and it has a folder of lost+found which I cannot access and I can't create any new folders because it's saying I do not have permission...

Another side question I have is that is there a way to get rid of partitions off a drive because in the Administration>Disks there is a greyed out delete and create buttons when you have a partition selected, so they are no help.

Every partition has a lost+found directory. Normally you can just ignore that. It is used if a files descriptor becomes corrupt, and so it doesn't know where the file originally came from.

As root you will need to grant permissions to everyone that wants to access the disk.

This can be done by changing the ownership of the directory
chown user /mnt/my_drive

or by granting access to all users
chmod 777 /mnt/my_drive

Alternatively you could use groups, but I'm guessing you have only a few users on this system and don't need that level of control.


Is the partition you want to get rid of still mounted?
You should have noticed from ScottReed's post that the command to unmount a filesystem is umount - note the only 'n' is before the t.

thank you penguin tutor for your help with the permissions and yes I finally saw that after a bit my eyes kind of repeatedly tricked me because I was thinking unmount so thats what I was putting thank you for all your help you'll probably see me asking more n00bish questions elsewhere at another time. >:]