How do you format an external hard drive to ext4 via the command line in ubuntu?
1 Answer
The command is mkfs.ext4
, see its man page.
If you are ok with the default settings(1), it's just
mkfs.ext4 /dev/yourpartitionhere
Footnotes:
(1) from the man page:
The defaults of the parameters for the newly created filesystem, if not overridden by the options listed below, are controlled by the /etc/mke2fs.conf configuration file. See the mke2fs.conf(5) manual page for more details.
-
Okay thanks. How do you get the device information? Like the command to know if it is /dev/sda or /dev/sdb? Nov 13, 2014 at 8:03
-
3
-
May also need to use fdisk fist to setup the partitions sudo fdisk /dev/sdx -> d -> n -> 1 -> enter -> enter -> w then the above sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdx1 depending on the partitions, it should be /dev/sdx1 most likely it is not /dev/sdx Dec 16, 2018 at 11:20