First, find the drive you want to format.
> lsblk
Note it down, it will from now on be referred to as /dev/sdX
, with it’s partition referred to as
/dev/sdXY
.
Unmount the partition
> umount /dev/sdXY
Wipe the device (this will take a while).
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1024
Recreate the partition table
> fdisk /dev/sdX
- Type
n
to create a new table - Type
p
for partition table - Type
1
to select the first partition - Press enter twice to select the default first and last sectors
- Type
t
to change the partition type of partition 1 - Type
6
to change it to FAT16 - Type
w
to commit the changes to disk
Reformat it as FAT32 so it can be used on all operating systems.
> mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdXY