With the terminal: Format a USB memory

When we don't have a graphical tool like GParted or the option to format memories as in Gnome, we can use a command that actually does the same thing as the two tools mentioned above.

The first thing we have to do is make sure we have the package installed dosfstools.

$ sudo aptitude install dosfstools

Once installed, we will check where our flash memory is located. We can use the command:

$ sudo fdisk -l

Which will return something like this:

The line that interests us is the one that says:

/dev/sdc1  *      62       7983863     3991901   b  W95 FAT32

Once we know which device to format is, we use the command:

sudo mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n Mi_Memoria /dev/sdc1

With option -F32 we tell you that it will be formatted as fat32, and with the option -n We put a label or name to the device.

Simple right?

Edito: I forgot to say that to execute this operation, the device has to be unmounted.