Summary
These instructions explain how to make a file system on a partition. It can either be a newly installed mSATA SSD or an inserted USB drive.
Instructions
If you have just made a new partition on a disk you will know that it has no filesystem and you can make one without loosing data. If in doubt you can try to mount it first. If mount gives an error you are (almost) safe to make a filesystem on it. To list all partitions on the system run the command ls -l /dev/sd??*. In this example there is only one called sda1:
root@turris:~# ls -l /dev/sd??* brw-r--r-- 1 root root 8, 1 Nov 27 20:50 /dev/sda1
Try to mount the partition and get an error to make sure it has no data with mount /dev/sda1 /mnt:
root@turris:~# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt mount: you must specify the filesystem type
We are now safe to make a filesystem on the partition.
There are several filesystem to chose. For a SSD drive Butter fuss btrfs might be the right choice and for an USB drive vfat might be the right. Here we make a filesystem for btrfs with the command mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda1:
root@turris:~# mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda1
btrfs-progs v4.17.1
See http://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org for more information.
Detected a SSD, turning off metadata duplication. Mkfs with -m dup if you want to force metadata duplication.
Performing full device TRIM /dev/sda1 (223.57GiB) ...
Label: (null)
UUID: c3ed7dcb-49c0-4e49-8d90-df42074e8aa3
Node size: 16384
Sector size: 4096
Filesystem size: 223.57GiB
Block group profiles:
Data: single 8.00MiB
Metadata: single 8.00MiB
System: single 4.00MiB
SSD detected: yes
Incompat features: extref, skinny-metadata
Number of devices: 1
Devices:
ID SIZE PATH
1 223.57GiB /dev/sda1
Now the sda1 partition is formatted and ready to be mounted.
To get a list of all filesystem commands type mkfs. and press the tabulator key twice:
root@turris:~# mkfs. mkfs.btrfs mkfs.ext2 mkfs.ext3 mkfs.ext4 mkfs.fat mkfs.hfs mkfs.hfsplus mkfs.msdos mkfs.vfat mkfs.xfs
