Disk Utility within Mac OS X provides a range of disk management tools, from erasing and repartitioning hard disks to restoring images and repairing volumes. It's a simple way of interacting with attached storage on your Mac.

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Beyond this graphical front-end are some powerful command-line tools that we can use directly. In this series, we'll look at how to replicate the functionality of Disk Utility at the command-line.

The following guide will require the use of an external hard drive which will be erased and partitioned.

• Exactly, I need to copy a Mac Disk Image on a hard drive to a flash drive. With the “restore disk image” function completely omitted or hidden in the new and (ahem) “improved” disk utility, I am completely dead in the water with a Mac I am unable to resurrect. I found this article unhelpful and incomplete.
• Raspbian Lite and command line. On a Lite version, it’s not the same thing You can plug your drive, and nothing happens 🙂 There are a few steps to follow to access it. Find the virtual drive name. Note: skip this if you already learn how to do it in the format part 🙂 Before doing anything else, you need to find the current name of the drive.

Most external drives ship in formats that are universally recognised amongst nearly all operating systems (FAT, I’m looking at you), but there may be times where you might want to completely wipe a drive and/or set it up to be compatible with Apple’s Mac lineup only. Either way, you’ll want to format your drive accordingly.

Terminology

A partition is a logical storage unit located on a hard disk. A hard disk can contain a single partition, making use of all the space it contains, or it can be split into multiple partitions.

In order to store data on a partition, it needs a filesystem. Once a partition has been formatted, this combination of partition and filesystem is known as a volume.

Here's a USB hard drive that has been split into 16 partitions, all of which will display separately on the Mac as separate volumes since they've been formatted, though they are all on the same drive.

Imagine you have a loft apartment that's just four outer walls. Think of partitioning as putting up dividing walls to create additional rooms. The more walls you put up, the more rooms you'll have, but all limited to the total amount of space you first had available.

But these rooms can't be used yet, not until you decide what each room will be. Formatting a disk partition is no different than deciding which room will be the bedroom or kitchen. At that point, it becomes a volume.

With the introduction of OS X Lion, your Mac's hard disk is split into two partitions with two corresponding volumes. The first is hidden and named Recovery HD for OS X Recovery, allowing you to reinstall OS X without needing any physical media. The second is the more familiar Macintosh HD.

Benefits of the Command-Line

Disk Utility is more than adequate to perform any form of disk management for most users. It's also safer than the command-line, displaying warning dialogs before proceeding with any potentially destructive functions.

For more experienced users, the command-line offers a greater level of flexibility and control so that what would normally require several different interactions and mouse clicks can be done with just one command.

Disk Information with diskutil

The diskutil command provides many of the features of Disk Utility, from verifying and repairing volumes to changing partition information.

To view the full list of available options for the command, enter the command diskutil.

Partition Information

Using the list option will display some basic information about all available volumes and drives attached. Within Terminal, enter:

In the following screenshot, you can see both the Recovery HD and Macintosh HD, both partitions contained on the Mac's internal hard disk. An external hard disk is also connected with a volume labeled Untitled.

There are some hidden partitions (such as EFI) used for the purposes of providing drivers and settings during boot. These aren't volumes since they cannot be mounted.

Depending on whether you have features such as FileVault 2 or Fusion Drive, your partition layout might differ slightly to what is pictured above.

For many of the options within diskutil, it's necessary to use the disk or partition's Identifier. Using list will provide you with this information.

Should you have a number of disks and only want to view information about a specific one, you can append the disk identifier to the command:

The first number represents the physical disk identifier. The number following the letter 's' represents the partition number. If a disk has three partitions, it would follow this convention:

• disk2s1
• disk2s2
• disk2s3

In addition to list, you can also use info with the corresponding identifier to display even further information, like so:

Verifying and Repairing Volumes

As within Disk Utility, the diskutil command can be used to verify or repair volumes of any errors and is very straightforward to do using either verifyVolume or repairVolume. These options don't need the disk identifier, just the volume's name:

If the feedback within Terminal looks familiar, that's because it's the same information Disk Utility provides.

Disk permissions can also be verified and repaired using two similar commands:

Erasing Disks

Erasing disks from the command-line can be a dangerous process as there aren't any warnings or confirmations. One typo could lead to irreversible data loss if there's no backup to restore from. If you're not familiar with the command-line, Disk Utility is just as capable.

You can either erase a whole disk which will remove any partitions stored upon it, or individual volumes without affecting others.

To erase an entire disk, you'll need the disk identifier, enter the following, adjusting the disk identifier to suit:

You'll notice this command has a little more going on than previous ones. The structure of the command is:

Erasing a whole disk will clear any partitions and create a new, single partition, before formatting it as a volume.

Filesystem

You can specify the filesystem to format the partition in by using any that are supported. The most common would be JHFS+ which is more commonly known as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

To find out which filesystems you can use, enter:

diskutil listFilesystems

Name

This simply refers to the name of the volume that will be created. In this instance, I've just labelled the volume as 'Test'.

Disk Identifier

Only the primary part of the identifier (i.e. disk1, disk2, disk3...) is needed. The additional segment indicating the partition number is omitted.

Erasing Volumes

Erasing volumes doesn't erase or affect the entire disk, only the volume you specify.

Here is an external drive that's partitioned with two volumes, FirstVolume and SecondVolume. To erase SecondVolume, the command is:

The command's structure is almost identical to using eraseDisk, only that you specify the volume rather than disk. Should a disk contain multiple volumes, only the one you specify is altered.

Reformatting Volumes

You'll notice that erasing a volume requires specifying the filesystem and name. This can be a bit tedious if you don't actually want to change either of these, but simply want to erase the contents.

Instead, the reformat option will erase the contents of the volume without requiring the filesystem or name, provided these are to remain unchanged.

Now, the volume will be erased but retain the existing filesystem and name.

Renaming Volumes

Within the Finder, you can quite easily rename the volume by selecting it on your desktop and pressing the Return key, just like you would any file or folder.

Renaming volumes within the Terminal uses a different method than the renaming of files and folder, something accomplished by using the command:

Wrapping Up

We've only scratched the surface of diskutil yet covered quite a lot. While the graphical interface of Disk Utility can be easier to interact with, a task that would involve several steps can be accomplished with just one single command.

In the next part of this series, we'll cover how to manage partitioning and modify volumes.

You can purchase the complete guide to Disk Management From the Command-Line that includes Building an OS X Triage Drive as an ebook in ePub and PDF format for just $0.99.

Nov 23, 2020 • Filed to: Answer Hard Drive Problems • Proven solutions

If you also own a Linux system, which is running on low disk space, then you might be facing a similar situation. Although Linux is one of the most popular open-source operating systems, it can be a bit complicated at times. For instance, there is no direct solution to do a Linux format disk using a dedicated GUI feature. Don't worry – you can still erase disk on Linux with the help of the right commands. Read on and clear your Linux disk space by following this extensive guide.

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Part 1: Why We Need to Format and Wipe Linux Disk?

Before we get to know different ways to format a disk on Linux, it is vital to understand the reasons behind it. Ideally, there could be the following major reasons for wiping or formatting a disk on a Linux system:

• If your system is running low on free space, then you can choose to wipe the data of a partition or a disk.
• Sometimes, a system can become slow by having limited free space. By formatting its Linux drive, you can improve its performance as well.
• If your system has been corrupted by malware, then you can wipe the hard disk of your Linux to resolve this.
• Mostly, users prefer to do a Linux format disk before reselling their systems. This helps them protect their data.
• There could be an issue with the firmware or the system storage, which can be fixed after wiping a Linux disk.

Part 2: How to Format a Linux Hard Drive?

Unlike Windows or macOS, there is not a dedicated disk management tool that can help us partition or format the disk. Therefore, we need to take the assistance of certain commands to format a Linux disk. If you are connecting your drive for the first time to your Linux system, then you need to create a partition beforehand. To implement this, you can enter the fdisk command. Once a partition is created, you can use the 'mkfs.ext4' command to format the disk. Here's a simple solution to format a disk on a Linux system.

Step 1: Create a partition of the disk

Firstly, connect the disk to your Linux system if you haven't already and launch the Terminal window on it. You can enter the following command to check it:

sudo fdisk –l.

Now, to create a partition, enter the command 'fdsk' in the following format:

sudo fdisk /dev/sdb.

This will launch the results of the fdisk command. If you want, you can type 'm' to get help. It will display a list of the supported parameters. You can type 'n' to create a new partition, 'd' to delete the partition, 'p' to check the partition table, and so on.

Firstly, press 'p' and enter to view the partition table. This will let you know about the disk identifier and the sector space. Subsequently, enter the 'n' command to create a new partition. You will be given an option to create a primary or an extended partition. Press 'p' to create a new primary partition and give it a number from 1 to 4. If you want to create a single partition, then enter '1'.

Step 2: Format the disk

Great! Once you have created the relevant partition on your Linux system, you can format it by entering the command –

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb.

This will make the system look for the available partitions on the drive. When you are asked to confirm your choice, just press 'y'. Afterward, wait for a while as the selected partitions would be formatted on the Linux system.

Step 3: Mount the file system (optional)

If you want, you can mount the file system as well. To do this, you can use the 'mkdir /data' command to make a directory. After that, end the following command to mount it:

mount /dev/sdb1 /data.

Part 3: How to Wipe a Hard Drive on Linux?

If you are planning to resell your system or are concerned about your privacy, then you should consider wiping the drive instead. Unlike formatting a disk, wiping it will erase the data and make the recovery process harder than before. Thankfully, there are multiple commands to do Linux wipe the disk. Here are some simple solutions to wipe a hard drive on Linux.

1. wipe

As the name suggests, the command is used to wipe data from a magnetic disk. Though, a lot of Linux systems do not have the command readily installed. In this case, you can use the apt install command first.

# apt install wipe.

Once it is done, just use the 'wipe' command in the format - wipe [options] target. For instance, to wipe a partition, simply enter the command:

# wipe /dev/sda2

Confirm your choice, by entering 'yes' and wait as the selected partition would be wiped.

2. shred

This is one of the best ways to protect your private data on a Linux system. Ideally, this works as a dedicated shredder – that would overwrite your data with something else, making the recovery process harder. This Linux based command has the following syntax:

shred [option] target

As you know, 'target' would specify the location you wish to shred. It can be a partition, folder, or file name. Subsequently, it can have the following options.

• -n: To overwrite data 'n' times
• -f: To change permission and allow the writing operation
• -u: Truncates the files after shredding them
• -s: To provide the size to shred
• -u: To remove the file after shredding
• -v: To enable the verbose mode
• -z: To add zeros to the final overwriting process

Therefore, you can wipe the Linux disk, by entering a command like this:

# shred -vfz -n 10 /dev/sda2.

This will follow ten passes of overwriting on the provided location, making it impossible for a recovery tool to retrieve data from it.

3. dd

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If you are running short on time, then consider using the 'dd' command to erase disk on a Linux system. Instead of generating random data, it will overwrite the entire disk with strings of zeros. Therefore, it will take less time to wipe the disk and protecting your information. Although, it provides certain options that you can use to customize the process.

dd if=source of=target [Options].

Make sure that you run the command prompt and as a super-user. Here's a simple demonstration of the same.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda2 bs=512 count=1.

The command will overwrite the target location with a string of zeros, as specified in the source. Also, this will copy 512 bytes in a single count. One of the major advantages of this is the time taken by the dd command is lesser than shred.

4. scrub

Lastly, you can also take the assistance of the 'scrub' command to overwrite your disk with specific patterns. Sometimes, the patterns can be randomly generated by the system too. Since the command is not present in every Linux system by default, you might need to install it first. To do this, you can use the apt install command.

Once it is done, just enter the command in the following syntax:

scrub [option] target.

Even if you don't provide an option and just specifies the target location to wipe, the command will work. Though, you would be asked to verify your choice to erase disk on Linux entirely. Here's a quick example of the same:

# scrub /dev/sda5.

Part 4: Tips for Formatting and Wiping Linux Disk

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After getting to know about these popular commands to create new disk space on Linux, you would certainly be able to format or wipe it. Besides that, you can consider following these tips to format or wipe the Linux disk successfully.

• Make sure that you have logged-in as a super-user (administrator) while wiping a disk. This will make the entire process a whole lot easier.
• Not every command might be installed on your system. Therefore, you can consider checking its status or installing it beforehand.
• Although there are third-party applications available to shred and wipe a disk, it is recommended to use reliable commands. If you use a readily available tool, then make sure it is from a trusted source with a positive reputation in the industry.
• Always double-check the command before entering it (particularly the syntax and the location). One small error and you might end up causing irrevocable damage to your system.
• Most importantly, take a backup of your important files before wiping the Linux disk. This will make sure that you have a second copy of your vital data in advance.

Format Flash Drive Mac Command Line Command

That's a wrap, folks! Now when you know how to format or wipe disk on Linux, you can easily meet your requirements. In case if you have accidentally deleted your data or have formatted a drive, then use a reliable data recovery solution like Recoverit Data Recovery. Using it, you can just attach your Linux device to a PC and later extract the lost or inaccessible content from it. Go ahead and try some of these methods and feel free to share your shortcuts or tips in the comments below.

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