should provide means to format usb stick

[Reinhard Tartler]

Binary package hint: usb-creator

usb-creator should offer an option to format the usb stick.

I have e.g. provided an ext2 formatted stick, which is of course not usable for the live cd. usb-creator should offer reformatting it with vfat.

[Evan (ev)]

It already does in 0.1.4 in the form of a format button that appears for any USB disk lacking a vfat partition. Did this not occur for you? What was shown for said disk?

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

Evan Dandrea <email address hidden> writes:

> It already does in 0.1.4 in the form of a format button that appears for
> any USB disk lacking a vfat partition. Did this not occur for you?
> What was shown for said disk?

Okay. But it would be helpful if that Button would appear for any stick.

I have a stick here with data on it that I no longer need. Of course I
could delete all files in nautilus, wonder why the stick hasn't gotten
empty, notice to empty the Waste Basket and rerun usb-creator. Having
that means in one place would be helpful.

   status confirmed

--
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4

[Evan (ev)]

I think formatting the device to clear off unwanted data is a bit of overkill.

I think it would be more appropriate to show the same open button that opens a nautilus window for the device all the time. It currently only appears when it's necessary to delete files to make space for Ubuntu. However, because this is a UI change and we're well past UI freeze, I'm going to mark this for 9.04.

[Emmet Hikory (persia)]

I can reproduce this behaviour. usb-creator fails to even detect a USB stick that is unpartitioned (VFAT exists on the raw device). In order to get the disk to appear in the dialog, it required repartitioning and mkfs.vfat against the new partition. No button was shown to allow for reformat.

[Evan (ev)]

Emmet,

It works here (sudo mkfs.vfat -I /dev/sdb; sudo blockdev --rereadpt /dev/sdb; usb-creator). Is this with usb-creator 0.1.7? If it is, please attach the output of hal-device after you've written a vfat filesystem to the raw device.

[Tim Gardner (timg-tpi)]

I want a one button format and install solution as well. If I'm creating a boot stick, then I obviously don't care about the current content, nor do I really want to be bothered with selecting and deleting files via the file browser.

[Emmet Hikory (persia)]

I've upgraded to usb-creator 0.17, which now recognises the unpartitioned vfat, and allows removal of files. Given that the entire contents of this stick are files to boot and install Ubuntu, I now agree with Tim that I still want a one-button "reformat" button, as it's time consuming to try to remove the files (and I need to be especially careful not to leave something that could conflict).

[karlrt (karlrt)]

its good that now the option is present, but there is currently no warning if you really want to format the usb disk, see this bugreport:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/usb-creator/+bug/443330

[Evan (ev)]

I'm marking this as fixed. usb-creator *always* shows a format button now (0.2.11, Karmic).