Creating new filesystems

I cannot start creating files and directories on my /dev/sdb1 partition just yet; first, I need to create a filesystem. A filesystem basically dictates how data is organized and stored on a disk (or partition). A good analogy would be passengers on an airplane; flight companies can't just let the passengers (data) seat themselves in an airplane (partition); it would be a total mess.

There are many different types of filesystems available on Linux. It is important to note that ext4 and xfs are the most commonly used filesystems. Figure 3 shows you only a few of the available filesystems that are supported on Linux:

Figure 3: Linux filesystems

You can read the description of each Linux filesystem type in the filesystems man page:

root@ubuntu-linux:~# man filesystems

To create a filesystem, we use the mkfs command, which is short for make filesystem. The general syntax for the mkfs command is as follows:

mkfs --type [fstype] disk_or_partition

Now let's...