Brain fart: no format option on a pen drive pop-up menu?

[Kevin J. Cummings]

On 08/26/2011 01:26 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 14:05, Kevin J. Cummings
> <cummings at kjchome.homeip.net> wrote:
>> A pen drive does not need a low level format
> 
> A pen drive is a "mass storage device" per USB specs. It doesn't
> matter if the data is then stored magnetically on a spinning disk, on
> flash memory, or hammered in wood by a robotic arm.

Of course the drive has to be capable of reading what it wrote.  B^)

> "low level formatting" does not exist anymore on PCs since the advent
> of the IDE interface, unless you use a manufacturer-provided service
> utility.

No, the tool may be harder to find, but the need for it still exists.
You've obviously never had to reformat an IDE disk drive when power was
inexplicably lost during a write cycle and the write head wrote garbage
across some sectors that used to be properly formatted.  This is a
function of how well the disk was designed and implemented.  If you do
the same on a solid state device, you might write random data to a
random location, but that's about all.  The actual blocks remain intact,
and don't ever need to be reformatted.

> I'm perfectly aware of the difference between partitioning and
> formatting. Formatting, as you well explain, is erasing the contents
> of a partition by laying out a new filesystem...

I do not agree with your "redefinition" of the term formatting.  Perhaps
its my history of writing formatting programs on CP/M and ZCPR back in
the days of ST-506 disk drives, and 5.25" and 8" floppies.

I wasn't sure what you actually understood given the nature of the
question and your not wanting to use the proper tools to accomplish your
end.

If you question was solely why doesn't the UI provide the option, then
you should file a BZ against the program in question.

> The fact that a FAQ like the following needs to exist shows the
> user-hostile nature of Linux in some instances... Yes, a user who
> plugs a removable storage device might want to format it...

S/he might want to change the file system on it, yes.  S/he might want
to change the partitioning of it, yes.  Both are best done from the
proper disk utilities.  I have found that Disk Utility (in the System
Tools menu) allows you to "format" the drive, if that's what you really
want to do, but I rarely find the need to use it.  Most people use pen
drives as inter-machine data transport (what we used to call "sneaker
net"), and require that it contain a file system that can be utilized on
the least common denominator system (usually Windows).

Personally, I feel that if you know enough about Linux to want to
re-format a pen drive, you know enough about the proper tools required
to do it.  YMMV.

> FAQ: How to format a Flash drive in Linux
> http://www.ehow.com/how_5092605_format-flash-drive-linux.html
> 
> ...and having to call GPartEd instead of showing a "format" option on
> the object' s pop-up menu is just stupid. I don't want to edit
> partitions, I want to do a quick format on the device to make 100%
> sure any hidden auto-executable win32 code is erased.

So, file a bugzilla request.  It sounds like its functionality that used
to be there and now isn't....

> I'm not 100% sure now, but I believe even 1992's IBM OS/2 2.0 featured
> a "format" option on any drive object's pop-up menu

Yes, another piece of software that was afraid to do something too
different from Windows....  but, Unix (and Linux) pre-dates Windows (at
least Windows 95....)

> FC

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at verizon.net
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)