Cleared vs. Unformatted partition in GParted

Solution 1:

These two options are unfortunately listed along with the others that act in a different manner. The other options are all filesystem formats, where the new partition is created with the selected format. These two options of interest are essentially the two null options.

• If one leaves a partition "unformatted" then no attempt to write filesystem data structures to it is made at all. But it might have them already, by accident or by design.
• If one "clears" a partition, then the various signatures in well-known places that operating systems use to detect filesystem types are wiped.

So, rather ironically, clearing a partition will give one the guarantee of it being unformatted as a result, whereas an unformatted partition may remain formatted as before.