There are times when you want a simple disk management application with a clean graphical Interface, like Disks in Linux Mint. The package providing that program is gnome-disk-utitlty. Here are the details for use in the Raspberry Pi OS and similar operating systems.
Who?
Who want Disks?There are lots of distributions of Linux lacking a clean easy way to look at disks and make simple changes. Most users of those Linux distributions would want Disks if they knew about it.
Many of those people are struggling with commands in the 1935 Teletype style Terminal application. Others are using the power of Gparted then crashing into the complications and ending up with partitions locked into the wrong permissions. Disks makes the most common activities easier.
When?
Disks is good for the things you do on a desktop computer or a notebook. You might not use Disks when managing a big server.
Where?
Disks can be used anywhere you have a Linux based operating system and a GUI, a Graphical User Interface. In the Raspberry Pi range of computers, this is the Pi 4, Pi 400, Pi 5, and Pi 500.
You can use Disks in a smaller computer, like a Raspberry Pi Zero 2, during the configuration and development phase but you will most likely switch the GUI interface off for day to day use. In fact you will probably develop on a Pi 4 with the desktop GUI then transfer the result to a Pi Zero 2 with no GUI and no Disks.
Why?
Disks just makes some things easier. Disks creates your partitions with your user as the owner. Disks makes image backups really easy and restores them to any storage device of at least the same size.
Way?
Disks is n the Debian repositories and can be installed on most Linux distributions based on Debian. You can install Disks from your Software Manager, from Synaptic Package Manager, using the following command, or the script shown below.
sudo apt install gnome-disk-utility -y
You can use the following script. The script is overkill but it records a log of the output plus records the full details of the package even if already installed plus it can be used inside another script installing a whole bunch of things. The log is dated and times to separate the logs if you run it multiple times. There is an estimate of the time used which you can check to see if your Internet access is working.
#!/bin/bash DISKSSTART=$SECONDS DISKSACTIVITY="install-disks" if [ -z ${ALOG+x} ]; then DATETIME=$(date +%F_%H-%M-%S) ALOG="$DATETIME $DISKSACTIVITY".log echo "Created log: $ALOG"; else echo "Use existing log: $ALOG"; fi echo "$DISKSACTIVITY start. " | tee -a "$ALOG" echo "Install Disks, the Gnome disk utilty. " | tee -a "$ALOG" echo "apt-cache show gnome-disk-utility " | tee -a "$ALOG" apt-cache show gnome-disk-utility | tee -a "$ALOG" echo "sudo apt install gnome-disk-utility -y " | tee -a "$ALOG" sudo apt install gnome-disk-utility -y | tee -a "$ALOG" echo "$DISKSACTIVITY end. Used $(( SECONDS - DISKSSTART )) seconds. " | tee -a "$ALOG"
Worth?
I use Disks heaps of times in a Raspberry Pi environment to backup microSD card images as a way of easily stepping back to a prior change. Older images can be compressed to something smaller in the .tar.xy format to save space. I use the Nemo file manager to browse images and select those for compression.
If you have a mass of microSD cards, you can backup the system microSD card to another microSD card. Otherwise you can just rotae a small number and use Disks to backup the microSD cards to a single SSD then compress the images to save space.
What?
My installation of Disks a few weeks ago downloaded gnome-disk-utility version 43.0-1.
The supplied package description:
GNOME Disks is a tool to manage disk drives and media: * Format and partition drives. * Mount and unmount partitions. * Query S.M.A.R.T. attributes. It utilizes udisks.
The installation Downloads 1,240 KB, adds four extra packages as prerequisites, and uses 8,813 MB of disk space.
The install log references menus but does not say where Disks is added. Disks is shown in the menu as Disks and is in different places in each distribution of Linux. Look in Accessories and Preferences.
When you start Disks, it shows the disks plugged in. you select a disk and it shows the partitions plus where the disk or partitions are mounted if mounted. There is an option to show S.M.A.R.T data if available.
You can delete and add partitions but not resize a partition. For resizing, you need Gparted.
Gparted can also delete and add partitions but may leave them owned by the root user instead of you. Disks runs as your user and leaves the partitions as owned by you.
Disks is stable and changes very little. You can use Disks in a three year old Linux and not see any difference. There is no need to force an upgrade to the latest release of Disks in any Linux distribution I tested.
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