A New, Easy To Use Disk Formatter For GNOME

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A New, Easy To Use Disk Formatter For GNOME

GParted is an excellent GNOME program for editing partitions, changing file-systems, and performing related disk tasks. However, GParted is not exactly the ideal program for new Linux users to familiarize themselves with if all they want to do is format a USB drive or external storage device. Fortunately, a new GNOME utility has come about that supersedes GFloppy and is designed to be a simple yet powerful disk formatting utility. In this article we are taking an introductory look at GNOME Format.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13352

[williamthrilliam]

This is awesome! Finally, a way to easily encrypt a hard drive. I have been waiting for this for a while.

[DeepDayze]

This is awesome! Finally, a way to easily encrypt a hard drive. I have been waiting for this for a while.

Now only if you can select what type of encryption engine you want such as AES, LUKS, or even Blowfish.

[Vadi]

Now only if you can select what type of encryption engine you want such as AES, LUKS, or even Blowfish.

I'm sure someone who'd care about that already has the appropriate command-line tools of the job

[mdmadph]

Wow -- this is absolutely amazing. Just the other day I had a user who was needing to format their Flash Drive, and I quickly realized there was no easy way to do this, and I wasn't about to try and show them how to use GParted.

This too is perfect for that.

Is someone making a .deb for this?

[stan]

Need to use DeviceKit

The makers of this new formatting utility should use DeviceKit, which is supersedes HAL and is developed by Red Hat.

[Vadi]

Is someone making a .deb for this?

Getdeb.net will have one whenever this is reasonably stable.

[BlackStar]

I may be dumb, but what exactly is the problem with GParted? It gives you a list of all disks. It displays existing partitions for the selected disk. Finally, it gives you a couple of buttons ("new partition", "delete partition", "resize partition" etc). Inspect the disks, select the one you want and click "new partition" - what's complicated about that?

I fail to see how the new tool is any easier to use. It contains a couple of nice features (volume names and encryption), but wouldn't it better to add these in GParted? In fact, the new tool seems to lack the visual represantation of existing partitions, which is *criminal* (it makes it all too easy to delete / format the wrong partition if you have two identical disks).

[Vadi]

@BlackStar: the usability improvement over GParted is clearly visible in the way both apps are designed. And it wouldn't be better to add tihs to GParted, because the two apps are made for different use cases. You don't just combine use cases together.

[Kano]

Well a simple script that uses sfdisk + mkfs would be able to do the same without any mouse click But of course a gui is better for beginners.