<div id="geary-body" dir="auto"><div>I know that others have touched on this subject already, but the easiest way that I have found for someone who is knew to work with the disk drives and anything that can be mounted, like your USB drive, is by using the software "gnome disks". You can install it by running sudo apt install gnome-disk-utility in your terminal, and it will show up in you menu. Just select the USB drive from the list on the left, and then click the hamburger menu at the top right and it will give you a drop down list of a few different things, one in particular is the "format option"</div><div> I know that gparted is a great tool, but you can do just about everything that you can do in it, inside of the more "user friendly" disks utility. I have been using it for a long time now, and haven't ever had the need to use gparted over disks, except for in situations that "disks" isn't available.</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers!</div></div><div id="geary-quote" dir="auto"><br>On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 6:04 pm, Victor Forberger <vforberger@fastmail.fm> wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite"><div class="plaintext" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">On 1/10/20 5:47 PM, Spackman, Chris wrote:
<blockquote> On 2020/01/08 at 03:47am, John wrote:
<blockquote> I can't find the format option when I right click the USB drive.
Eventually,I can't format the drive.
I also can't rename the USB drive.
</blockquote>
Disclaimer: I'm not in front of my Xubuntu box right now, so I'm going
from memory.
I would suggest installing GParted and using that. There might be a more
new-user friendly method, though, so if you install and open GParted and
get intimidated, maybe wait for a better answer. Please be careful -
used carelessly, gparted can reformat your main drive, which would
probably ruin your day.
That said, GParted is pretty easy to use. Select the usb drive from the
drop down menu at the top right. Right click on the area showing the
drive space / partitions. Choose "format to" and then the file system
type that you want. Usual choices are vfat (fat32 I think it is called?)
if you plan to use the usb drive on other, non-Linux, computers (such as
MS Windows or Apple Macs). If it is just for use on Linux, ext3 or ext4
are good choices.
To give the usb stick a name, use the "Label" or "Name" fields when you
format it (I honestly forget which one it is - Label, I think, but not
sure.)
For most straight-forward stuff like reformatting, GParted doesn't do
anything until you tell it to. So, for example, if you have selected
"Format to => fat32" and added a label, it won't actually do anything
until you go to "Edit => Apply All Actions". Then, it will do it. Until
you do that, you can cancel / undo and redo all you like until you get
everything like you want. After you click "Apply All Actions", you
cannot undo.
But, like I said, please be careful. Double and triple check that you
have chosen the correct drive before you apply any changes. Read any
messages that GParted gives you very carefully and don't click anything
if you don't understand what it is telling you.
</blockquote>
As noted above, gparted is the answer. Volume info and formatting cannot
be done from the desktop.
You may need to install additional drivers/libraries depending on your
usb stick. Gparted will prompt you about the missing drivers/libraries.
For more info, see the help section on formatting a drive at
<a href="https://docs.xubuntu.org/1804/user/C/hardware-devices.html#disks-partitions">https://docs.xubuntu.org/1804/user/C/hardware-devices.html#disks-partitions</a>.
- Victor
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Victor Forberger
<a href="mailto:vforberger@fastmail.fm">vforberger@fastmail.fm</a>
blog: <a href="http://linuxatty.wordpress.com">http://linuxatty.wordpress.com</a>
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