I am a little confused with linux as to how to format a remote harddrive. The method by command line i still haven't grasped!I wish to format this 80gb hard drive for backup purposes in a caddy.The intention being that i can use it on either a windows machine orubuntu and so thought it best to format it to FAT32. This is now whati've achieved using gParted. Was that the best way?But how good is the formatting in ubuntu - it seems to be done in afraction of a second compared with a windows format and there doesn'tseem to be a linux way of checking for damaged sectors.
You best bet is to use gparted, a partition manager. Go to Settings |Administration | Partition Editor. Once in the program choose your disk in theupper right corner. Then Right click on the graph to Format. Then Apply.
That's what i did but i want to use something like windows scandisk tothoroughly check for errors. looking in the man pages there is a thingcalled DD but i'm not quite sure how it works.