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Is there some way to quickly format a USB pendrive in KDE (with a GUI interface), without having to open the main "KDE Partition Manager"?

In particular I'm most interested in something like a Dolphin plugin or a Plasmoid.

If it matters, I'm on Kubuntu 12.04 with KDE 4.10.

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  • 1
    most fastest way to do partition is from cfdisk or fdisk on terminal..
    – shouso_boy
    Apr 22, 2013 at 11:14
  • 2
    Thank you, I know about the CLI commands, but I'm looking for a GUI utility.
    – Sekhemty
    Apr 22, 2013 at 12:15
  • There are several tools in Ubuntu and the Ubuntu community flavours (Kubuntu et.al). You are running an old version, 12.04 LTS that has passed end of life. How updated is it? Are you still running the precise kernel series (12.04.1) or have you updated the hardware enablement stack and the trusty kernel (12.04.5)? It may make a difference concerning which tools will work well. Anyway, I have the (standard) Ubuntu ubuntu-12.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso and ubuntu-12.04.5-desktop-i386.iso files and can test with them what works, and it is likely to work also with the corresponding Kubuntu files...
    – sudodus
    Jun 25, 2018 at 17:56

2 Answers 2

1

New answer for an old question.


Mintstick from Linux Mint is the quickest, containing two separate gui tools, one to format an USB drive ("USB Stick Formatter"), one to write an image on it ("USB Image Writer").

To install it in older Ubuntu

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tsvetko.tsvetkov/trusty-backports

or

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tsvetko.tsvetkov/xenial-backports
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mintstick

For Ubuntu 18.04, until a newer version is launched along with an Ubuntu 18.04-based Linux Mint, download latest version 1.3.8 from here.

Open a terminal at the location of the download and do

sudo dpkg -i mintstick_1.3.8_all.deb

Install the missing dependencies.

If needed do

sudo apt --fix-broken install

then do again sudo dpkg -i mintstick_1.3.8_all.deb.

Run it by typing "USB Stick Formatter" in a launcher - or mintstick -m format in terminal.

enter image description here


In case that cannot be installed on your system, a good alternative is gnome-multi-writer. It is able to format a stick before writing, but cannot simply format (without writing anything). For that, one can use "Disks" (gnome-disk-utility), which is a bit quicker than Gparted or the KDE Partition Manager.

If the usb stick already contains a live Linux, it is a bit trickier: first, select "Format Disk" from the top right corner (NOT "Format partition" ),

enter image description here

then select "Partitioning: No partitioning".

And only then select Additional partitioning options - "Format partition" , FAT, Next, Format.

enter image description here

enter image description here

0

I can verify that mkusb works in 12.04.1 and 12.04.5 iso files and I think will also work in a corresponding installed Kubuntu system. It can not only

  • wipe a drive (remove the first mibibyte and that way prepare it, so that most tools will be able to manage it, for example gparted),

but also

  • restore a drive to a standard storage device (for example a USB pendrive) with an MSDOS partition table and a FAT32 file system. This is a quick and convenient 'standard method'.

There are also other features of mkusb, the main feature is to

  • create USB boot drives.

See the following links

help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb

help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/wipe

If you run standard Ubuntu live, you need an extra instruction to get the repository Universe. (Kubuntu, Lubuntu ... Xubuntu have the repository Universe activated automatically.)

sudo add-apt-repository universe  # only for standard Ubuntu # 14.04 and newer
sudo add-apt-repository 'http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ universe'  # 12.04

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/ppa  # and press Enter
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mkusb mkusb-nox usb-pack-efi

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