How to format hard drive on Ubuntu

If you are new to ubuntu, you might be wondering how to format a hard drive, usb stick, memory card, and other storage device on ubuntu. In this article i will show you how to format hard drive and other storage device on ubuntu.

There are few program available on ubuntu to format hard drive, well not just formatting but also manage the partition itself. And from all of those program, i found that a program called gparted is the best one, it is easy to use and works really well.

Gparted does not come pre-installed on ubuntu, so you need to install first if you want to use it to create partition or format a hard drive. To install gparted, open your terminal/console/command line and then type this command:

sudo apt-get install gparted

kernelpanic@kernelpanic:~$ sudo apt-get install gparted
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libgtkmm-2.4-1v5 libparted-fs-resize0
Suggested packages:
  xfsprogs reiserfsprogs reiser4progs jfsutils kpartx dmraid gpart
  libparted-dev
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gparted libgtkmm-2.4-1v5 libparted-fs-resize0
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 110 not upgraded.
Need to get 671 kB/1,134 kB of archives.
After this operation, 6,923 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y 
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ wily/main libgtkmm-2.4-1v5 amd64 1:2.24.4-2 [671 kB]
Fetched 671 kB in 6s (104 kB/s)                                                
Selecting previously unselected package libparted-fs-resize0:amd64.
(Reading database ... 178061 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libparted-fs-resize0_3.2-7ubuntu1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libparted-fs-resize0:amd64 (3.2-7ubuntu1) ...
Selecting previously unselected package libgtkmm-2.4-1v5:amd64.
Preparing to unpack .../libgtkmm-2.4-1v5_1%3a2.24.4-2_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libgtkmm-2.4-1v5:amd64 (1:2.24.4-2) ...
Selecting previously unselected package gparted.
Preparing to unpack .../gparted_0.19.0-3build1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking gparted (0.19.0-3build1) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.15-0ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.4-1) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-6ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1ubuntu3) ...
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon (0.5.2~bzr0+15.10.20150627.1-0ubuntu1) ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf-2.index...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.58ubuntu1) ...
Setting up libparted-fs-resize0:amd64 (3.2-7ubuntu1) ...
Setting up libgtkmm-2.4-1v5:amd64 (1:2.24.4-2) ...
Setting up gparted (0.19.0-3build1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.21-0ubuntu4) ...

Once installed you can open it from unity search by typing 'gparted' and click on it, you will be prompted for password, enter your root password and you will see something like this:

If you ever use program called partition magic on windows, you will feel gparted are very similar in terms of user interface and functionality.

Using gparted you can pretty much do anything from creating new partition, format partition, set bootable partition and so on.

In my opinion, gparted is the best partition tool on ubuntu, it has everything i need to manage my storage devices, and it's free, that's the best thing about ubuntu.