19.10 unorthodox format?

[Ice-Tea]

Any media i format to NTFS with gnome-disk can't be used in either my Hisense or Netgear Mediaplayers as it says no disks attached yet the same media formatted to NTFS with either Gparted or Windows works perfectly.

gnome-disks seems to name EXT4 disks differently as instead of sdb1/sdc1 it's just named sdb/sdc?

Since upgrading to 19.10 i've started having issues with ubuntu seeing previous gparted EXT4 formatted drives ( that have worked perfectly before ) as suddenly now being read only?

Formatting a boot drive with Gparted to EXT4 also hangs during the install of ubuntu 19.10 but not when the boot drive has been formatted with gnome-disk it just installs as normal?

I've tried this on two desktops and one laptop and they all exhibit the same issues.

[TheFu]

Linux will happily let you format an entire disk, though it is NOT a best practice to do so. In short, always partition any disk. Don't expect the system to ask or require it.

I've only used gnome-disks when people here complain about it doing something funky. Those issues don't happen with other tools, so why use gnome-disks?

[The Cog]

Can you be clearer about what you are formatting? It is normal to place a partiton table at the start of the drive, that allows you to logically divide the disk into several partitions and format each partition separately, creating for instance sda1, sda2 and sda3. Most tools expect this kind of layout.

But it is possible to format an entire drive with a filesystem without adding a partition table first, in which case you get for instance sda or sdb. Without a partition table, there is nowhere to place a bootloader on such disks. I am not sure how easily such disks would be recognised by tools or operating systems although Linux can mount them without difficulty.

Confusingly, Microsoft like to call each partition a drive as well as calling a drive a drive.

[Ice-Tea]

Any media i format

USB 2.0 / USB 3.0 flash drives
Sd cards
Micro Sd cards
Mechanical Hardrives - caddy - external usb powered and power brick
SSD hardrives - external usb powered and power brick
Mechanical Hardrives - internal sata
SSD hardrives - internal sata

[The Cog]

You can use lsblk -f to see how connected drives are formatted. This will show whether you have formatted them with or without a partition table.

[TheFu]

A disk will have these layers (abstractions), starting from the bottom:

Physical disk
Partition table (MSDOS Partitioning or GPT)
Partition(s)
Each partition will have a formatted file system
Each file system will have directories and files


At the "partition" level above, other storage management methods can be inserted ...

Partitions(s)
Encryption Container
LVM-Physical Volume, PV
LVM-Volume Group, VG
LVM-Logical Volume, LV
Each LV will have a formatted file system
Each file system will have directories and files


The "Encryption Container" above is optional. It can be removed. Simply shift the LVM and other parts up. LVM can use PVs from multiple disks, so any LV can effectively access storage across 1 or 100 different disks, if you like. ZFS merges the PV, VG, LV into a "pool" which can accomplish similar stuff.

Storage can become complicated quickly. But because most storage devices can be seen as a "file", we can create a file of almost any size and use that file as a block device at the physical disk, partition, encryption container, or PV layers. That means that a file like that could be formatted with a file system. Because this is so across all Unix-like OSes and because it is both dumb and brilliant, we can do all sorts of interesting things with storage on Unix-like OSes that Windows would choke over. It is also possible to format a file system onto the whole disk device. Unix can't tell if we are being brilliant or stupid when we do things like this.

If you have any interest in that last paragraph, you can google "everything is a file" to learn more. If you don't care or don't need to know the inner ideas around any Unix-like OS, it is pretty safe to ignore most of this post. Once we understand the everything is a file or a process idea, there are some really amazing things we can accomplish, like cloning a flash drive into a file for a backup.

[Ice-Tea]

Standard Right click on drive from Nautilus or choosing format from utilities Disks and then formatting to either EXT4 or NTFS.

Ubuntu can see the drives but my Mediaplayers can no longer see the drives unless i use Gparted to format them.

Never had issues before 19.10

[The Cog]

So format a drive with disks then run lsblk -f, then format the same drive with gparted and run lsblk -f again. Post the two lsblk outputs and we can look to see if we can see a difference.

[sudodus]

I recommend gparted too. It helps you get the partition structure, that some (most?) programs expect.

Otherwise you may get the old structure of floppy disks, where the file system starts directly from the head of the drive.

[Ice-Tea]

Sorry to waste everyone's time , i was the problem as i never selected partition type in Gnome-disks options before doing the format , when doing so it correctly formatted from sda/sdb to sda1/sdb1 ... etc etc.

I'm going back to just using Gparted as it's obvious what state the drive is in and it's less prone to user error and idiots like me. :D

Thanks everyone.

[TheFu]

Sorry to waste everyone's time , i was the problem as i never selected partition type in Gnome-disks options before doing the format , when doing so it correctly formatted from sda/sdb to sda1/sdb1 ... etc etc.

I'm going back to just using Gparted as it's obvious what state the drive is in and it's less prone to user error and idiots like me. :D

Thanks everyone.

No worries. Stuff like that happens to everyone. Just happy you figured it out AND let us know. We really are personally invested in helping people figure this stuff out. Thanks very much for reporting back! Clearly the Disks interface could be improved.