GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 687093
No easy way to easily format a USB stick
Last modified: 2013-02-18 16:25:28 UTC
There is no easy way to easily format a USB stick in GNOME 3.6: Nautilus doesn't provide this option, and Disks makes it complicated. I think that Nautilus is the most appropriate place for us to provide simple USB formatting. It is where people see USB sticks most often, hence we get the direct manipulation factor. Also, I suspect that formatting is a kind of "files" operation to a lot of people.
We used to have this as an extension provided by gnome-disk-utility back before it became Disks, then it was removed. I'm not opposed to reintroduce this feature back in Nautilus, but I think I would like to keep the format code in Disks. UI-wise, how do you think this feature should be exposed?
(In reply to comment #1) ... > UI-wise, how do you think this feature should be exposed? Same as before - context menu on the drive in the sidebar, then a little dialog.
I think the best would be to have Files offer a "Format Disk" option (context menu item, button, whatever...) that simply launches Disks and its "Format Disk: dialog (e.g. "gnome-disks --block-device /dev/sdb --format-disk"). FWIW, I added an item to the Disks TODO list for the "Format Disk" dialog to make it more friendly (insofar that the user will not have to create partitions manually afterwards), see http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-disk-utility/tree/TODO#n55
Btw, another option (as I think was originally proposed) is to have the gnome-disk-utility package provide a gnome-format-disk(1) command (that would show the "Format Disk" dialog) but I really would prefer to just have this in Disks. E.g. I don't think that "Disks makes it complicated" is a good answer - if Disks is too complicated, we should make it simpler, not duplicate functionality etc.
I don't have an opinion on which component should provide this functionality. The only requirement is that there's a simple format option available from Files.
What is the current state of affairs here ? Right now, if I insert a usb stick with a fedora live image on it, nothing happens - I don't get a notification, and it doesn't show up in nautilus either. gnome-disks shows it as a drive, but the fedora partition on it doesn't get mounted automatically
Filed the failure to mount as bug 693621
The gnome-disks implementation of this is now in bug 693682
Created attachment 235827 [details] [review] places-sidebar: add a Format menu item for volumes This runs gnome-disks with a commandline that just sets the format dialog as transient for the Nautilus toplevel.
Attachment 235827 [details] pushed as a73c8c7 - places-sidebar: add a Format menu item for volumes This is fixed now in master.