How to format & partition a 2nd disk?

[Leaning-Tree]

I have an old Windows PC with 2x SSDs in it. I've successfully installed Elementary OS on the first disk, but the 2nd disk is unusable as it's formatted to all sorts of Windows partitions.
I've wiped the disk & created a filesystem using:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1
mkfs -text4 /dev/sdb

So now I can see the disk in disk but can't see any partitions (not sure if I need any over & above what I've got from mkfs?).
I've installed gparted & can rename the drive, but it's still not appearing in the Elementary OS Files app & I can't seem to do much with it.
I guess I need to create 1 partition that takes up the entire disk, then it will be addressable, but can't see an obvious way to do so...

Help would be appreciated; I like that Elementary OS is super stripped down ... but perhaps it might be nice to be not so stripped down it doesn't even include basic disk management?

[ryonakano]

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1
mkfs -text4 /dev/sdb

So now I can see the disk in disk but can't see any partitions (not sure if I need any over & above what I've got from mkfs?).

You need to create a new partition before mkfs by using fdisk, parted, etc. That's also possible in GParted from the New context menu:

Note that creating a new partition could wipe your data on the disk.