Flash drives you purchase will often come formatted with FAT32 for maximum compatibility across not just modern computers, but other devices like game consoles and anything with a USB port. Here I’m using Dolphin, the explorer built into Kubuntu.Before you begin the digitization process, make sure that your USB or external hard drive is formatted in FAT32 or exFAT following the instructions below.įAT32 is the de-facto standard file system that works between PC and Mac operating systems since 1995. You can verify it again using your systems file explorer. No errors found.Ī benefit of using fsck is that will also remount the drive for you, making it ready to use. Your output will vary depending on the drive you formatted, but it will resemble something like this: fsck from util-linux 2.36įile system checking finished. Once formatting is complete, we can check its status using the fsck command. Now that the drive has been unmounted, we can format it using the mkfs utility. dev/sdb1 7815648 96 7815552 1% /media/arcanecode/4ECB-E340įor this exercise, I’ll be using the /dev/sdb1 drive which is my 8gb thumb drive.īefore we can proceed, we’ll have to unmount the drive. Your output will look something like this: Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on Start by opening up a terminal window, and entering the following command: df Note, these instructions assume you’ve already followed the instructions in my previous blog post, and installed the exFAT utilities.

To make it more portable to other versions, we’ll do most of it using the command line. The techniques will work with most Ubuntu/Debian based installs.

Linuxįor this section, I’m using screen shots from my Kubuntu 20.10 computer. I’ve used this technique with macOS versions from High Sierra onward. Just click Done, and the drive will be ready for you to use.

Format disk for windows and mac os