How to format an external hard drive to ext4?

Question

I just got a WD MyBook 6TB external hard drive. Most time, I will use it to transfer files between Ubuntu systems. Sometimes I use it for Win or Mac system. So anybody could suggest how to format the hard drive for best use? I am using Ubuntu 15.04.

Solution

you can

• use Disks (the tool you get by entering Disks in dash)
• or you can install gparted and use that
• or you can do it from the command line using fdisk in order to delete/create a partition and mkfs.ext4 in order to format a partition.

and - as commented by Byte Commander: ext4 is not a good choice if you want to be compatible with windows or OSX.

in any case make sure you work on the correct drive/partition. it is surprisingly easy to wreck your system with these tools!

Comments

[Byte Commander]

ext4 is not readable for Windows, except if you install some special drivers. So if you plan to transfer files to Windows machines using your disk, you better use NTFS. That can be read by both Windows and UNIX-like (Ubuntu, OSX) systems. It can cause difficulties though, especially concerning Ubuntu's permission system.