Hi I am very new to Raspberry Pi environment, so looking for a bit of help to format a usb hard disk drive. I ran lsblk and got

sda 8:0 0 37.3G 0 disk
sda1 8:1 0 37.3G 0 part

looking on web, if tried the following "sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 -L USB40gb" it did something but when I tried to mount the drive again, it still showed the files that were there before and I can not create new file/folder "Error creating directory: Permission denied"

I am writing this from my windows 8.1 pc so can not cut and paste from the pi. trying to format its output is a bit hard.

Oh, there is Nothing written after the word "part" above. There use to be /media/USB40gb so I have done something because this has disappeared. I am using PCManFM 0.9.10 It does not have a format option, which would make life a lot easier, but then its not windows.

I think I am running the basic linux os for the pi. It boots to a graphic environment, but I do not know how to advise what it is. I think its OpenBox 2.0.4

Thanks in advance

Speed

PS: I reran the format string above but this time I changed the label to read USB37gb. I did this to confirm that I was in fact formatting the right drive. Low and behold, it actually formatted the drive, wiping everything from it. Great ... testing it by creating a new folder on the drive and get error msg Permission Denied!

So I have fixed the formatting issue by trial and error but still can't use the drive...

Suggestions anyone?