Try to install Xfce onto a hard drive, Seagate Momentus 5400.4 which is connected to the PC vis USB port and has around 15,000 pictures on it. Xfce installer recognizes the drive. I want to remove the pictures and format it but cannot find the hard drive.
Thanks.

You don't format it the way windoze formats it. You repartition it and make a new (blank) filesystem. Ext filesystems write superblocks throughout the new partitions.

If the intention is to wipe something like a FAT filesystem to prevent recovery you can

• Use dd to put on zeroes or random numbers.
• If you're a spy or super-paranoid, use shred on spinning rust drives to attempt to erase all traces of magnetic patterns that sophisticated forensic software could conceivably recover. This can take days.

you cannot install xfce onto a hard drive. You can install an OS (like ubuntu) to a hard drive. xfce is not an OS, but a desktop environment.
So what OS is it exactly? In general during the install (of the OS) it will ask for a partition. You need to select your hdd, remove existing partitions (and probably it will offer a default partitioning scheme too). All the additional steps will be made by the installer.

XFCE usually has Gparted under the System menu; use this to wipe &/or re partition your drive, if that is what you want.

You will overwrite the whole drive - so make sure you really want to overwrite your pictures!

To get XFCE on the disk, you will need to install a distro that uses it, or else add it via the distro's package manager.

Thank you.

"you cannot install xfce onto a hard drive."
Maybe I do not understand the term "install" thoroughly, but I do have an Xfce installed onto a HDD, a Hitachi Deskstar P/N0A36918 500GB, and I am typing these words to you from this Xfce.

Please do not rake me wrong. I am NOT arguing with you. What I am saying is that I do not understand the Linux meaning of "install" and "desktop" and "OS" and many other terms.

Thank you.

"XFCE usually has Gparted under the System menu;"
Yes, there is a "Gparted" in the system menu. Will try to use it.

"To get XFCE on the disk, you will need to install a distro that uses it, or else add it via the distro's package manager."
I am totally lost here. What confuses me is the terms saying Xfce being a desktop which can not be installed onto a HDD. Yet, my experience says it can. For a few months, I tried more than a dozen times to install Xfce onto a USB flash stick and all failed. About a week ago, I tried to install the same Xfce from the same USB live bootable flash stick onto a SATA hard drive, a Hitachi Deskstar P/N:0A36918 500GB, and the installation went through the process easily and smoothly, almost automatically by 7 or 8 steps in about 20 minutes. It was the easiest installation I had ever experienced. I, therefore, do not and can not understand why Xfce can not be installed onto a hard disk.

Thank you.

"You repartition it and make a new (blank) filesystem."
I'll try to repartition the hard drive by Gparted. Have not trouched Gparted. Do not know what will come out.

What is the full name of the installation iso you are using?

I know, so start over again.
First of all when you want to use a computer you need to install an operating system on it (that is the OS). For example windows. Or another one, a linux based distro (like ubuntu, debian, mint, SuSE, RedHat, Slackware just to name a few).
Next you need to put some software into the OS. This is called installation too. For example you install facebook on your phone, or usually we install a browser (or something else). In a linux based environment you need to install a graphical engine which will draw the menu, windows and all the things on your monitor, without that you will have only the old console display. This is called Desktop Environment (or DE). You have a lot of choices, like KDE, Gnome or the one you want to use Xfce.

So what OS do you want to install?

You're welcome.
Computing terms can be confusing at the start...

An O/S is the first software to be installed onto a computer, most often done by the manufacturer, & usually MS Windows - in Linux, this is called a 'distro', this is the O/S.

Often there will be different graphical environments, on different distros, (this is called 'choice', but can be confusing for a newbie).

You have successfully installed a 'distro' that is using the graphical environment called the XFCE desktop environment (DE), which has a number of useful programs installed alongside, & under the menu.

Hope these basic terms are of help in your understanding of using your computer with Linux.

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Here is how to use gparted - https://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name=help-manual

Nearly every distro has a default desktop environment and that is the one you get at first installation. But you don't have to stick with it if you don't like it. Most distros have other desktops in their repositories and you can install one of those alongside the default one.

That's because in Linux, the graphical desktop is almost completely independent of the underlying system, like a hat on a head. You can always take the hat off and put on another one, or go bareheaded if you prefer. Linux servers usually don't have any kind of desktop installed, because on a server, that's just a waste of resources.

Some distros which are angled at newbies come in different "editions" with different default desktops. So you have Ubuntu (Unity desktop), Kubuntu (KDE desktop) and Xubuntu (XFCE desktop). And likewise you have Mint/Cinnamon and Mint/Mate. But you can achieve the same thing on any distro just by installing the desktop you prefer separately, from the repo.