Formatting Drives on Linux
Summary
When you mount a drive to Linux that you need to wipe, you might run into an error like this:
sudo wipefs -a /dev/sda
wipefs: error: /dev/sda: probing initialization failed: Device or resource busy
This is likely because Linux has a partition on that drive mounted, so it cannot make changes to the drive itself.
To solve it:
- Run lsblk to identify any mounted partitions on that drive (e.g.,,
sda1,sda2, etc.) - Unmount just the partitions
sudo umount /dev/sda1 - Erase the storage, for example with
sudo wipefs -a /dev/sda
Now you can do whatever you want with the drive, hopefully nothing to raunchy.