How to format a USB drive?
 

Simple question.

I'd like to format a NTFS drive to EXT3.

Is there a simple way to do this?

All of the documentation I find is far too complex for the task at hand.

Please help?

Gparted!
 

Use Gparted, after opening-goto "gparted menu and pick your USB-see screenshot.
Next, right click on the USB in gparted and unmount it-see screenshot.
Now, right-click again on it and choose either DELETE or FORMAT TO...FAT16 or FAT32-your choice, or EXT3.
Now hit apply and your done!

Sorry i Should have clarified

This is for a Redhat based system

command line only

fdisk may be my only option..

Assuming the partition already exists,
Replace sdc1 with the appropriate partition name for your thumbdrive.

man mke2fs


--- rod.

Use parted

or mkfs.ext3 mkfs.... for the task

mkfs gives you more control

#man mkfs

parted lets you manipulate the partitions and do lot more

Assuming that you know the device name of your hard disk and the partition name of the part that needs formatting. First step is to unmount that volume from it's mount directory (if it is mounted).
Then you can format your partition on the unmounted device (needs to be root for this)
Of course replace my samples with your device and mountpoint.

The formatting tool is actually mke2fs, but some distributions provide script or binaries for specific filesystem formatting. mkfs.ext3 is typical on Fedora. Read man mke2fs for details.

The above information actually only overwrites the filesystem. For full hard disk formatting and repartitionaing you need /sbin/fdisk (type m for help info).

linux

Thanks!