The changes need to be written to the partition table, so use the w command to commit. Now use the p command again to see your new partition Command (m for help): p This gives the whole disk to your new partition. Use p for primary partition, Enter to default to partition 1, Enter to select first sector and Enter again to select last sector. Use the n command creates a new partition,

Use the d command to delete existing partition, then p again to verify it is gone While in fdisk you can verify the partitions with the the p command Command (m for help): p (make sure you are root, su - root or sudo -s) fdisk /dev/sda If you are connected to the RasPi with a terminal window or via ssh use fdisk to view and recreate the partitions. So I have fixed the formatting issue by trial and error but still can't use the drive. testing it by creating a new folder on the drive and get error message Permission Denied!

Low and behold, it actually formatted the drive, wiping everything from it. I did this to confirm that I was in fact formatting the right drive. PS: I reran the format string above but this time I changed the label to read USB37gb. It boots to a graphic environment, but I do not know how to advise what it is. I think I am running the basic Linux OS for the Pi. I am using PCManFM 0.9.10 It does not have a format option, which would make life a lot easier, but then its not Windows. There use to be /media/USB40gb so I have done something because this has disappeared.

Oh, there is nothing written after the word part above. Trying to format its output is a bit hard. I am writing this from my Windows 8.1 PC so I can not cut and paste from the Pi. It did something but when I tried to mount the drive again, it still showed the files that were there before and I can not create new file/folder 'Error creating directory: Permission denied' Looking on web, if tried the following sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 -L USB40gb. I ran lsblk and got sda 8:0 0 37.3G 0 disk Hi I am very new to Raspberry Pi environment, so looking for a bit of help to format a usb hard disk drive.

How to format usb drive on raspberry pi