How to Format a FAT Partition in Linux
- 1). Open a terminal window. The terminal window will be called "Terminal," "Konsole" or "Xterm," depending on the distribution that you are using.
- 2). Type the command "su" to become the root user. Type the root password when prompted.
- 3). Type the command "fdisk -l" to list the partitions that are currently on your computer's hard drives. Note the device name for the partition that you want to format. It will look like "/dev/sdb1" and will be the first portion of the line.
- 4). Type the command "mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sdb1" to format the partition using the FAT32 filesystem. If you want the filesystem to be FAT16, type "16" after the "-F" option.