GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 786467
Can't format USB sticks with GPT partition tables
Last modified: 2017-08-23 10:35:03 UTC
This is probably a problem with Disks, but I'll start from Files. Steps to reproduce: (a) Use dd to copy a Fedora Workstation ISO to a USB stick. (b) Insert the USB stick, open Files, right-click on sidebar, and select "Format ..." (c) Formatting fails with a udisks error. It might be because the USB stick has a GPT partition table once the Fedora image is written to it. Note the "Partition Table: mac" line below: [rishi@svoboda ~]$ sudo parted /dev/sdb [sudo] password for rishi: GNU Parted 3.2 Using /dev/sdb Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) p Warning: The driver descriptor says the physical block size is 2048 bytes, but Linux says it is 512 bytes. Ignore/Cancel? i Model: Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 124GB Sector size (logical/physical): 2048B/512B Partition Table: mac Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 2048B 10.2kB 8192B Apple 2 53.6MB 60.3MB 6658kB EFI 3 60.3MB 74.7MB 14.4MB EFI (parted) To workaround: (parted) mklabel msdos (parted) p Model: Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 31.0GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Disk Flags: Number Start End Size Type File system Flags (parted)
What udisks error? But I suppose you see: This partition cannot be modified because it contains a partition table. (udisks-error-quark, 11) The problem is that live media are kinda special and partition table is inside of the first partition. It is expected, that you can't format the partition, unfortunately. The problem is that Nautilus is "partition-oriented", so "Format..." in the sidebar just means formatting the one partition and not the whole device... See also: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76178 Workaround: 1/ open GNOME Disks 2/ select correct disk in the sidebar 3/ click the hamburger menu in titlebar 4/ Format Disk...
Hmm, this is probably duplicate of Bug 768031.
Ah yes, this we had a whole bug report discussing how to make the disk visible, instead of partitions, for this same reason and also for ejecting which ejects the whole disk including other partitions and that makes it confusing. But I cannot find it now...
(In reply to Ondrej Holy from comment #2) > Hmm, this is probably duplicate of Bug 768031. Yes, also bug 778821 too. (In reply to Carlos Soriano from comment #3) > But I cannot find it now... I can't find it either, but the discussion in bug 768031 comes very close to that.
Thanks for the pointers! (In reply to Ondrej Holy from comment #1) > What udisks error? But I suppose you see: > This partition cannot be modified because it contains a partition table. > (udisks-error-quark, 11) Yes, I think it was error code 11. > The problem is that live media are kinda special and partition table is > inside of the first partition. It is expected, that you can't format the > partition, unfortunately. The problem is that Nautilus is > "partition-oriented", so "Format..." in the sidebar just means formatting > the one partition and not the whole device... I see. I didn't know that the partition table is inside the first partition. > Workaround: > 1/ open GNOME Disks > 2/ select correct disk in the sidebar > 3/ click the hamburger menu in titlebar > 4/ Format Disk... Ok, I'll try that next time. Feel free to mark this as a duplicate of whichever bug you think is most relevant.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 768031 ***