Hi here is my problem,
I want to format the hard disk partition using filesystem independent method which will look into superblock of the partition and format the contents of the disk and also edit the superblock making all the erased blocks as the free blocks in bitmap.I want to do all these using C program is there any example code showing how to achieve this.
Thanks in advance.

Last time I checked, formatting a drive _was_ file system dependent. There is no such thing as a generic formatter. Although the different filesystems use the same concepts of superblocks, inodes, their implementation varies thus a generic program would not be adivsed.

Do you want something that will just delete from the disk in an file system independent way? One already exists, it's called dd. No matter what you do, dd, or any other wipe utility, you'll be forced to use a 'filesystem' formatter before you can use the disk again, unless you have a program that will access raw partitions.

It might be worth looking at the source for ext2/3 and Reiserfs.

You don't need to "format" a hard drive, they are formatted at the factory.

If you want to create a filesystem, then that is obviously filesystem dependant!!!!

If you want to wipe the drive, then use dd as crabboy said.

Thanks for the suggestions I'll follow the filesystem dependent format commands in linux.
one more query can I format the NTFS partition from linux?R there any commands like mkfs.ntfs? please help.
Thanks once again for the suggestions.

There is no robust r/w support for NTFS in linux (yet) and certainly no formatting support. If you write it, you'll be a hero, unless you toast peoples' filesystems. In that case, you will be the opposite of a hero

u can easily easily use shell options in
system call like
"
#include<stdio.h>
....................
system(" fdisk .....");

EVIL EVIL I SAY.

actually i would like to see fsck.ntfs more then anything.

Please make one linux gods

Thanks for reply regarding NTFS support for linux I just wanted to confirm it.
Regarding using system(command); in C I know how to use it but how to catch errors when I execute a command using system it just returns whether the command was able to execute or not isn't it? if I want to catch errors occured during execution of that command then how to do that?
Thanks for NTFS clarifications.

Use fork & exec and then a wait/waitpid to check the exit status.