How to Format a USB Drive in Ubuntu
<![CDATA[It is necessary to format a USB Drive if you want
to use Linux commands such as chmod on the drive.
You can format and relabel your USB drive by performing these steps.
Before plugging in the drive type
$ ls /dev/sd*
Then plug in the drive wait a few seconds and run
the above command again. The output of the command should
have an two additional items like: "sdc sdc1". The name that
ends in a number "e.g., sdc1" will be used as a parameter for
the upcoming commands.
Because you don't want to format the wrong drive (Linux is
unforgiving after all) you can double check you have the right
dev name by using the System Monitor tool under the
System->Administration menu.
Now unmount the drive. Just right click on it an choose
unmount.
Next format the drive:
$ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdc1
You can then rename the drive
$ sudo e2label /dev/sdc1 MY_DRIVE]]>
See also
