Bug 1247565

Summary: [RFE] Don't let users format a disk without creating partitions first
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Alexander Ploumistos <alex.ploumistos>
Component: gnome-disk-utilityAssignee: David King <amigadave>
Status: CLOSED EOL QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 22CC: amigadave, zeenix
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OS: Linux   
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Last Closed: 2016-07-19 17:13:46 UTC Type: Bug
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Description Alexander Ploumistos 2015-07-28 10:38:19 UTC
Working late a few nights ago, I had to replace a failing disk used for archiving. I already had gnome-disks open, so instead of using fdisk or gparted, I decided to prepare the disk with gnome-disks. I "formatted" it, set the files to be copied onto it, set the computer to shut down after a reasonable amount of time and went to bed.

The next morning as I inspected if everything was in order, I saw this in fdisk:

Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x2052474d

Device     Boot      Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1          6579571 1924427647 1917848077 914.5G 70 DiskSecure Multi-Boot
/dev/sda2       1953251627 3771827541 1818575915 867.2G 43 unknown
/dev/sda3        225735265  225735274         10     5K 72 unknown
/dev/sda4       2642411520 2642463409      51890  25.3M  0 Empty

Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 3 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition table entries are not in disk order.


It took a few seconds, but then I realized I had forgotten to set up a partition before formatting the drive... Now I'm not saying this is a common scenario, but given Gnome's philosophy, I think that users should not be allowed to shoot themselves in the foot in such a silly manner. At least a warning should have popped up.

A closely related bug report had been filed upstream a few months ago.

Comment 1 Fedora End Of Life 2016-07-19 17:13:46 UTC
Fedora 22 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2016-07-19. Fedora 22 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the
current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this
bug.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.