Although this is a list of bugs, I would like to go through all of Rebecca's originally reported issues at this point. There are some very valid concerns being presented in this Bug. However since there are many issues presented, I have done my best to separate them into bugs that exist and new bugs and give answers to the one that will not have their own bug (in which case you may chose to open one after reading the explanation).

Bug A) Stop listing /dev/sd[a-z][1-9] devices alongside /dev/sd[a-z]
Answer A) I have spoken to the main developer of usb-creator who informs me that .img files for Ubuntu Mobile requires the images to be written directly to the device, and not a partition. As well, and a lot of USB disks come formatted as a single vfat filesystem without a partition table. The first is a corner case and this needs to be discussed with the Design team and the Mobile Team. The second is less important, as the drive can be wiped and a partition table can be created when (re-)formatting the disk. For the majority of users on the Ubuntu Desktop, this should be simplified as they/we are the largest use case. As previously mentioned by Daniel Richard G., the option of being able to have multiple bootable partitions one one disk is not officially supported by usb-creator. If necessary, I would suggest opening a bug for an "Advanced mode" for your use-case and for the Mobile Team's use-case. Bug #506586 was created for the change request to move back to simple device abstraction.

Bug B) Identify the devices as best as possible. If Nautilus can show spiffy SD and CF and generic disk icons, so can usb-creator-gtk. At an absolute minimum, displaying the current volume label (if there is one) would be enormously helpful.
Answer B) Formatting needs to be intuitive and safe. No confirmation is bad, but it not the root of the issue. We need to assist the user in understanding which device they are formatting. USB Creator could wipe the wrong drive as many of us have experienced. We need to identify the DEVICE NAME (taken from lsusb), an icon of a USB Key, USB Drive, SD Card or CF Card icons, current volume label, size, and mount point. Bug #506602 was created for the change request to make formatting safe and intuitive.

Bug C) Issue at least one generic warning before performing any destructive operations.
Answer C) When warning that a device will be formatted, we need to present the Current Drive Name, request a New Name and warn "Please make sure you have backed up all data off this drive. $CURRENTNAME will be formatted to $NEWNAME". Bug #445810 (this bug) as well as Bug #446891 will be marked as a duplicate of the previously reported Bug #443330 (high priority) for the common data loss issue caused by no warning/confirmation.

Bug D) Issue a second warning for ext[2-4] and other Linux filesystems. Possibly a second warning for any non-WinDOS filesystems.
Answer D) One well formulated warning should be useful enough. Should you find that one warning is not enough, this should be brought up again. What is currently positive, is that usb-creator will not show any internal (IDE/SATA disks) which lowers risk of formatting an important filesystem. No action will be taken other than what was mentioned in Bug C.

Bug E) Either refuse to operate on a mounted filesystem, or warn that it's mounted, and offer to unmount it.
Answer E) Ideally the exclamation mark would display a mouse-over tooltip showing the issue (drive mounted, too small or other issue). No action will be taken other than what was mentioned in Bug G (tooltip request).

Bug F) Stop bypassing back-end tools' refusal to operate on mounted filesystems until usb-creator-gtk has its own set.
Answer F) usb-creator needs tighter integration into the desktop for mounting/unmounting devices. Expecting tight integration with the desktop (not as many errors when mounting/ejecting). This will be continued in Bug #458334 for the cryptic DBUS error and Bug #506577 for the "job is pending" error. If you have another issue with mounting/ejecting please search current bugs and/or open a new bug for that issue.


Other issues mentioned in bug comments:

Bug G) Exclamation mark without reason or tooltip
Answer G) Mouse-over tooltip (or message section at bottom of window) is needed to present the error/message to the user. Bug #506610 was created for this request.