Formatting External Disks On Linux Without Wiping Own Machine

The eternal Linux disk formatting dilemma in one perfect image. One wrong letter in your device path and suddenly you're not formatting that USB drive but wiping your entire system drive instead.

That moment of panic when you realize /dev/sda is your boot drive and /dev/sdb is the external drive you actually wanted to format. The cold sweat. The racing heart. The "oh god what have I done" realization.

This is why seasoned Linux admins triple-check every destructive command. We've all been one typo away from an unplanned weekend rebuild.