Should warn that formatting will erase the entire contents of the device (all partitions).

The external usb HDD had 2 partitions. When selected the FAT partition to reformat, the whole drive was formatted with FAT. I lost the whole lot of valuable information. This is critical to fix, or give a warning that the whole disc will be formatted.

It is essential to provide a message that the formatting operation is about to be performed!

Perhaps it should format ONLY the partition you have selected, or if you have selected the device, the whole device. Either way it should tell you what its about to do, and let you back out.

For example, if the partition list was:

/sdc
/sdc1
/sdc2

Pressing format with the first one selected will format the whole drive, where as selection either of the other two should just format that partition only.

I just formatted a 1 terrabyte external USB drive instead a stick. 1 click, no warning and it was gone.
OUCH.
(didnt help it was an NTFS drive, so I lost data that testdisk couldnt recover as parts were overwritten)

I agree this function should do more than warn you it will format the whole drive.

The "USB disk to use:" window in USB Startup Disk Creator only shows partitions and not the whole drive. By selecting a partition it should only format that partition.

This is a serious bug that I think would be better to fix and have it format the selected partition, or remove the formatting feature entirely and refer the user to the Partition Editor to format the partition prior to use.

It should then warn you the selected partition will be formatted and all data lost.

I also lost data because of that problem!!
This program need to be updated with a warning about the data formating..
If someone choice format just a partition..that shouldn't format the whole disk!
And before of format anything the user should receive a warning windows Saying "Hey I will erase all data from THE PARTITION YOU CHOICE!"
thanks

I tried this with a Kingston 2GB flash drive. It wiped out both FAT partitions, creating one "unknown" partition /dev/sdc1, then refused to install because it claimed there wasn't enough space. It apparently did not actually format the new partition.

gparted fixed that.

Count me in on this one. Went to create an ubuntu remix on my sony usb stick. Program appeared to hang badly after clicking format.
End result, sony usb drive was completely formated (both partitions) + my WDD USB 320gig drive was wiped and converted to a fat32 drive, wiping out 310 gigs of video files. (I did NOT select this drive for the operation.)

Yep. If teskdisk doesn't work, you can call me less than thrilled here.

Same here.
I have a 1 TB external HDD from WD. I wanted to use one of the two partitions to make a Karmic live USB. The program listed three entries - the smaller, 50 GB partition "sdb1" (which I selected, as it was empty), the 950 GB partition "sdb2" (which I used for storage purposes) and the whole physical device "sdb". I clicked "Format", and an error came up. Sadly, I didn't write it down. I do remember it was fairly technical. Convinced that something went wrong and nothing happened, I tried to mount the drive (just in case, heh), only to find a single, non-accessible (because it was in use) 1000 GB volume in the "Places" menu. I checked Task Manager and found mkfs.vfat and dosfsck working happily in the background.

before: 1 TB external HDD - 2 NTFS partitions; one 50 GB, empty; the other 950, filled with 500 GB worth of backups of varying importance.

after: 1 TB external HDD - 1 FAT32 partition; empty, just shy of terabyte.

Interestingly enough, the disk appears to be empty and thoroughly unusable even for the program's intended purpose of making a bootable live USB. But that's the least of my worries right now.

Should format only selected partition & ask before proceed.

Just an addendum. Testdisk could SEE linux partitions as well as the new FAT partition on my WD USB external drive, but it could recover none of it as it indicated that it was "corrupt".

I'll never use the ubuntu usb creator tool again nor recommend its usage, until and unless I see that it has been fixed and updated to include warnings as well as a better dialog screen to show the drives neatly rather than with the pitiful little scroll field it currently displays.

Until then I'll consider it as dangerous as the "rm" command.

Motherfuckers. What a kind of programmer do such a ridiculous app? I lost 250Gb of valueable information. What da'hell this guys is thinking about? Uh...they don't think ! Put a simples cancel or ok after press format button, that was everyone is waiting. It's so obvious. Dumbass !!!

I got burned by this too, though I was fortunate not to have lost as much as others have here. Jesus Christ, this app is the software equivalent of Happy Fun Ball. Thank God it doesn't let you select fixed disks.

* Hitting "Format" when a partition-device is selected should only format the partition. (I wanted to just create a new filesystem instead of manually deleting the files of the old Ubuntu CD-ROM. Reasonable, yes?)

* Hitting "Format" when a whole-disk-device containing multiple partitions is selected should prompt that the existing partition table will be wiped. (Programs that modify partition tables, as standard convention, use *extreme caution* and extensive user prompting so that they do not accidentally destroy data. We, as users, have come to expect this, because we have a lot of time/effort/money invested in our data and will shy away from anything that puts it at undue risk. Not only does this program flagrantly violate that user expectation and need to be fixed, whoever was responsible for that aspect of the design needs to be retrained. If you're a developer, you DO NOT write programs like this, unless you're a rank amateur, or you have malicious intent. No one who thinks an app with this behavior is acceptable should have commit access to Canonical repositories.)

* Hitting "Format" when an existing filesystem is detected should prompt that DATA WILL BE DESTROYED, just as the regular installer already does when partitioning/formatting disks (see Bug #443330, and the above editorial).

evgheni, why is this bug not assigned to usb-creator-hackers?

I was bit by this as well. "Not enough space on this partition", I wanted to format that partition, and then it laid a new partition table on the drive.

I had two FAT32 partitions on the disk. testdisk can't find them. Has anyone had any luck with recovery?

I see that lp:~flimm/usb-creator/warn-before-format was added as a fix to this bug.

Is this a temporary fix or the final solution? I hope that it is temporary since there is no other behavior in Ubuntu that reformats an entire drive, wiping out all partitions at once.

If this is the final solution I suggest changing the installation CD's to not install this product by default, but instead make it available through synaptic.

Horrible experience with this program !!!!! 120 GB of PRICELESS data got lots !!!!