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

[charles zeitler]

Do what thou wilt
shall  be the whole  of the Law.


On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 18:55, Alan Cox <alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>> No another meaningless option that wouldn't actually do anything.
>>
>> If you want to blank a drive into a new file system format you just need
>> to be sure to clean up any confusing superblocks and get the type right.
>> For the same fs you will hit the metadata anyway.
>>
>> And if you want to blank a disk you need to issue a security erase
>> command, not just overwrite the data. The latter does not do what you
>> would always want on modern storage systems, particularly flash.
>>
>> Alan
>
> Yes "blank a drive" aka "formatting" it.
> With the same file system it previously had. (fat32).

as i understand it, formatting a drive doesn't necessarily overwrite
the whole disk & blanking (erasing) it is too expensive for a default
formatting. and Alan was perhaps too subtle- flash does funny things
when you write to it.



>
> Doesn´t need to be a "full format", a "quick format" would do.


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302686

notice that in both cases, files are 'removed from the volume',
not erased.

>
> So, I maintain my original comment... I think it should be possible
> from the Gnome GUI to right click and select an option to "format" the
> drive (who partitions a thumb drive?? 99.9999% are used in a
> single-partition mode)

this would be handy- but would probably be limited to vfat...

> Hey, look here
> http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/disk-format.html.en
>
> "If you have a removable disk like a USB memory stick or an external
> hard disk, you may wish to completely remove all of the files you have
> on there. You can do this by formatting the disk - this deletes all of
> the files on the disk and leaves it empty."

delete- not erase. and certainly does not leave it empty-
an empty drive has no format.

>
> Wow, plain English. No misconceptions about what formatting means. :)
>
> So let me rephrase my original post: on removable drives, shouldn´t
> there be a "Format" option (or "wipe" if you wish) that invokes ´disk
> utility´ with the right params to beggin formatting it?.

with a prompt for the root password.

>
> FC
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charles zeitler

-- 

Love is the law, love under will.