2

I know I can format Bootable USB drives with gparted or software like that. I do it every time I need to.

But I want to know why nautilus can not format that? Is there any logic behind it?

I searched many sites but the only thing I found was How to format it with gparted or software like that.

3
  • I am not sure what you want, make a USB drive bootable or erase a formerly bootable USB drive to use it for regular storage again?
    – Byte Commander
    Jun 16, 2017 at 19:54
  • @ByteCommander I want to know what is the logic behind the Nautilus that can not "erase a formerly bootable USB drive to use it for regular storage".
    – ICE
    Jun 16, 2017 at 20:13
  • 4
    I do not have a device ready for testing at the moment, but I assume that Nautilus can only format partitions. However, a bootable USB is no longer just a single partition, it can be multiple. It also has a partition table and boot sector stuff, which might cause the incompatibilities.
    – Byte Commander
    Jun 16, 2017 at 20:22

1 Answer 1

4
  • Nautilus uses some tools under the hood, and one of those tools may have problems with some partition tables and or file systems.

  • It is a good idea to use a dedicated tool like gparted to create or edit the partition table and file systems (alias formating).

  • Some versions of gparted has problems with the iso 9660 file system, that you get, when you clone an Ubuntu iso file to a USB pendrive or memory card. When that happens you can use mkusb to wipe the first megabyte or restore it to a standard storage device,

    help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .