Formatting a storage device typically involves the following steps. This article includes the directions for steps 1 and 2.

1. Create one or more partitions (see fdisk, gdisk, parted)
2. Format each partition with a file system (see mkfs and mke2fs)
3. Mount the partition in /etc/fstab

Before using the mkfs command to create a file system, the fsck command can be used to determine if the partition has a file system type.

fsck -N /dev/sda1

If the partition does have a file system type, something like this should be returned. In this example, the /dev/sda1 partition has the XFS file system.

Even if the partition already has a file system, the mkfs command can be used to change the partition to use some other file system.

[/usr/sbin/fsck.xfs (1) -- /boot] fsck.xfs /dev/sda1

The mke2fs command can be used to assign a new file system to a partition or to change the partition to use some other file system. In this example, either of these commands will configure the /dev/sda2 partition to use the ext4 file system.

mke2fs.ext4 /dev/sda2

Or like this.

mke2fs --type ext4 /dev/sda2

It is somewhat common to use the -j option, which uses journaling and the ext3 file system.

mke2fs -j /dev/sda2

Following are some of the more popular filesystem types used by Linux.

• ext2 (second extended file system)
• ext3 (third extended file system)
• ext4 (fourth extended file system)
• xfs (extended file system)
• lvm (logical volume)
• raid

You are now ready to mount the partition /etc/fstab so that the partition is available at boot.