Qumarth Jash

Reformatting a bootable drive to be usable again using the Linux command line

May 14, 2019
1 minute read

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