GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 422070
"setting disk label" dialogue is misleading
Last modified: 2008-04-18 15:39:17 UTC
The dialogue for setting disk labels is not sufficient. 1. "set disk label" sounds to the unsuspecting user like setting the name for a partition, not deleting the whole disk!!! (Think about it. This is the most dangerous, far reaching step in the whole partitioning process apart from program mistakes the user doesn't have to account for.) A label implies being descriptive in nature because a label is usually not content. Therefore it should be renamed to something like "Delete Partition Table". Describes what it does. 2. The warnings regarding this are not adequate as well. They should spring to the eye. They should be in red letters rather than being attached to the bottom of a technical description in small print. (You know what we usually get in the small print...) How much better is: "If You do this then I WILL DELETE YOUR DISK." I suggest the following, which is not so rude: a) Rename to "Delete Partition Table", b) remove one or possibly both warnings, instead c) add a visual clue. The grayed-out harddisk on which you will have to use the Apply-button. Like it was done in QtParted. The grayed-out harddisk will make even the thickest user think. In case this program strives for being the best which it probably is it should not lead the user to points where he doesn't want to be. Instead make the GUI as easy and descriptive as possible without sacrificing functionality. It's easy here. And the rest you've already done perfectly. (If you want to let them know about disklabels refer them to a man page instead. I guess on second thought you'll see I am right and you probably were right all along but just didn't do it. Please don't let the number of google searches on restoring deleted harddisks grow. Every case is one too much.) TY Smallprint: I consider this a bug because it has probably led to more data loss than the other bugs combined. And the ashamed user - who would write about it?- being that stupid? I did. [But I just wanted to know if this GUI would really let me kill my harddisk. Yeah, it did.] Other information:
(In reply to comment #0) > The dialogue for setting disk labels is not sufficient. > > 1. "set disk label" sounds to the unsuspecting user like setting the name for a > partition, not deleting the whole disk!!! yes that's right ! (Think about it. This is the most > dangerous, far reaching step in the whole partitioning process apart from > program mistakes the user doesn't have to account for.) A label implies being > descriptive in nature because a label is usually not content. Therefore it > should be renamed to something like "Delete Partition Table". Describes what it > does. > 2. The warnings regarding this are not adequate as well. They should spring to > the eye. They should be in red letters rather than being attached to the bottom > of a technical description in small print. (You know what we usually get in the > small print...) How much better is: "If You do this then I WILL DELETE YOUR > DISK." Well in fact it does even if there is no partition on the drive e.g. with new hd. So it is not as simple to find out the right sentence... But this is true : there's something to do. > > I suggest the following, which is not so rude: > > a) Rename to "Delete Partition Table", > b) remove one or possibly both warnings, instead > c) add a visual clue. The grayed-out harddisk on which you will have to use the > Apply-button. Like it was done in QtParted. > > The grayed-out harddisk will make even the thickest user think. In case this > program strives for being the best which it probably is it should not lead the > user to points where he doesn't want to be. Instead make the GUI as easy and > descriptive as possible without sacrificing functionality. It's easy here. And > the rest you've already done perfectly. (If you want to let them know about > disklabels refer them to a man page instead. I guess on second thought you'll > see I am right and you probably were right all along but just didn't do it. Yeah, that's right ;) > Please don't let the number of google searches on restoring deleted harddisks > grow. Every case is one too much.) :) > > TY > > > Smallprint: I consider this a bug because it has probably led to more data loss > than the other bugs combined. And the ashamed user - who would write about it?- > being that stupid? I did. > > [But I just wanted to know if this GUI would really let me kill my harddisk. > Yeah, it did.] > > Other information: > I made some comments through your text. Unfortunately, Plors (the C++ dev) is away, and really dunno when he is back to write some code...
This is a ***very*** serious problem and the severity should be set much higher. The text in the dialogs is incredibly misleading and fixing this should have a very high priority. I just waited 30 hours for gparted to resize the C: partition on my new machine and was trying to put disk labels on the logical partitions I had created in the free space when your program wiped out my entire factory configuration. I'm now faced with restoring the system and then going through another 30-hour resizing before I can do anything useful with the machine. The text on this dialog should be very explicit ... something like "Click 'Cancel' unless you really want to wipe out everything on the entire hard disk - not just the active partition" Do you have any solution or work-around to recover from this problem other than a complete reinstall of the factory pre-load? This occurred on the latest version which I downloaded from the web site on 19 January 2008.
Hi Daniella and P J Taylor, My name is Curtis Gedak and I'm the new C++ developer for GParted. Thank you for this bug report. I agree that the menu item "Set Disklabel ..." does not use strong enough English to clearly identify the use and risk of this menu option. I plan to change the menu option to "Initialize Disk Partition Table ..." which I believe is more descriptive of the actions taken by this menu item. I also plan to rework the dialog wording and place "Warning: Initializing the disk partition table WILL ERASE ALL DATA from /dev/sda!" in large font near the top of the dialog. Daniella, I am unclear on point 2c) "add a visual clue. The grayed-out harddisk on which you will have to use the Apply-button. Like it was done in QtParted." I have tried QtParted-0.4.5-CVS and did not observe an option to write a new partition table (i.e., GParted's "Set Disklabel ..."). I also did not observe the whole disk being greyed out when I selected partition operations. What steps did you take for QtParted to display the hard disk being greyed-out? P J Taylor, I empathize with your situation. Hopefully you were able to locate tools to recover your partition table. One such tool is testdisk. Testdisk and many other useful recovery tools are available on Live CDs, such as the System Rescue CD. Regards, Curtis Gedak
Three changes have been made to address this bug: 1) Changed the wording of the device menu from "Set Disklabel ..." to "Create Partition Table ...". 2) Enhanced the wording that creating a partition table will ERASE ALL DATA from the ENTIRE DISK. 3) Removed double confirmation of "Create Partition Table" action. These changes have been committed to the Gnome repository for inclusion in the next release of GParted. NOTE: The suggestion by Daniela regarding "greying out the entire disk, and requiring the apply button to be chosen" is a good suggestion. This is a non-trivial enhancement to implement because the operations that are queued and applied are all partition operations, not device/disk operations. Hence it will not be implemented at this time.