What command should I use in Linux to format completely as in Windows?

Question

I would like to know if there is any command in Linux (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc) that is equivalent to the Windows full format option.

Answer 1

Linux has various terminal tools such as fdisk, parted. GParted is a graphical interface for parted.

Answer 2

Type fdisk /dev/sdx (replacing x with your drive letter) Type d to proceed to delete a partition. Type 1 to select the 1st partition and press enter.

Answer 3

By "fully format" a partition, are you trying to write over the data? Eg a 'secure erase?' Gparted and other formatting utilities wont overwrite the data. They just define the filesystem. The bit representation of the data is still retained until its needed and then overwritten by the OS/filesystem. I'm guessing you want to write zero's across the entire disk, and then create the filesystem?

To overwrite a drive or partition:

# List disks
fdisk -l
# Look for 2 lines like the following
Disk /dev/sda: 477 GiB, 512110190592 bytes, 1000215216 sectors
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
# Calculate optimal sector size (Using physical sectors)
let "count = 512110190592 / 4096"
block=4096
# Wipe disk
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=$block count=$count seek=0 status=progress

Replace /dev/sda with the drive you want to wipe. sda is generally the first drive on the system. A USB or other external device will start from sdb onward. The let count command is taking the size of the disk and dividing it by the physical sectors and creating a variable named count. The count and block variables are then used to start from point zero and write 0's until the end of the disk. dd reads 0's from /dev/zero and outputs them to /dev/sda.