New In KDE Partition Manager 1.1 (VI): The Fine Print In the Feature List
Let me conclude my little sequence of posts on new features in KDE Partition Manager 1.1 with some small yet useful features that were not spectacular enough to warrant a post dedicated to any of them exclusively.
GPT Partition Tables
The only partition table type supported in KDE Partition Manager 1.0 was MS-DOS, which is the one most x86 and even AMD64 computers use, mainly because of Microsoft DOS and Windows heritage (it's the only type Microsoft's Windows OS fully supports in the 32 bit variants to this day).
This partition table type is well supported and equally well known, not only for its strengths but its greatest weakness too: It supports only up to four primary partitions. A higher number of partitions is supported only though a kludge called "extended partitions" that was added on as an afterthought. This works, but has its disadvantages.
For some time now there has been a new type of partition table coming into wider use, called "GUID Partition Table". This new type tries to overcome all the deficiencies of MS-DOS partition tables with a future proof and well thought out design.
When creating a new partition table, KDE Partition Manager 1.1 asks for the type to create, offering GPT as default:
New File Systems
In the new version KDE Partition Manager gains support for some new file systems:
Support for all of those is mainly constrained to being able to detect them, however.
Export And Import Partition Tables
Partition tables can be exported to human readable and editable text files and imported from those.
Such an export might look like this:
##|v1|## partition table of /dev/sdc
# on Wed Jun 2 21:02:33 2010
type: "msdos"
align: "sector"# number start end type roles label flags
1;21659648;117209087;extended;extended;"";""
2;2048;6770687;fat32;primary;"XYZZY";""
3;6770688;21659647;unknown;primary;"";""
5;21661696;54157311;ext3;logical;"frotz";""
6;114561024;117209087;linuxswap;logical;"";""
7;73824256;104595455;ext3;logical;"blorb";""
8;54159360;73822207;ext2;logical;"";""
9;104597504;108931071;unknown;logical;"";""
10;108933120;114558975;unknown;logical;"";""
It resembles the format used by sfdisk, but adds some more information, so the two are not compatible without some conversion.
Shredding
As has been already hinted at in a previous installment of this series the new version supports shredding of partitions. Shredding in this case means a more secure form of deleting a partition: The partition is not only removed from the partition table, the space it took up on the disk is also overwritten so the data cannot be easily recovered.
Be aware that shredding a large partition can take a very long time, especially if the space on disk is to be overwritten with random numbers (which is the default; the other option is overwriting with zeros).
Improved Main Window View
The partition tree view in the main window now has a lot more information available in additional columns. These are hidden per default, so as not to overwhelm the user and make the main window look too cluttered. They can be made visible by right clicking on the tree view's header, just like in other applications like Dolphin:
The column order is also configurable. All this is saved in the application's configuration and thus persistent across sessions.
In the above screenshot you can also see how each partition now shows the file system's configured color next to the type for easier identification.
Improved Application Startup
Application startup has been improved. In version 1.0, the application would begin scanning devices before showing the main window. This could lead to confusing situations for some users when the scanning took a very long time (this can happen when the BIOS has a floppy drive configured that is not actually present in hardware; KDE Partition Manager tries to work around this since 1.0.1, however).
This has been improved: The main window is now shown before scanning starts.
Even more importantly scanning devices is now done in a separate thread while the GUI shows a progress dialog, keeping the user informed on the scan status.
Finally, the first device found is always being selected in the device list on startup, which is especially handy if there's just one single device to operate on.
And Many, Many More...
There's still more. Like full KIO support in all file dialogs. Or performance improvements in the GUI and the backend code. Or support for setting volume labels on FAT32 file systems. Or fully tested support for devices with more than 2^31 sectors. Or...
You get the idea. In any case, I hope you'll agree that KDE Partition Manager 1.1 is going to rock.
This concludes part six in a sequence of entries presenting some of the new features of the soon-to-be-finished KDE Partition Manager 1.1. The previous parts were:
11 Comments
Wow! It is really impressive, how much time and work you have put into the KDE Partition Manager. I loved the program already, but now it does so many things I wished it could!
Thank you for your immense work. It is really highly appreciated. :)
Wow, sounds like there has been a lot of progress.
2 questions:
1. Will the shredding support the built-in shredding function present on many hard disks nowadays, or does it only do it manually? If it does it manually, how many passes does it do?
2. You said the support for luks is limited. Does this mean no creating of encrypted partitions?
Thank you for your words of support and the praise!
1. It's built in and overwrites file systems, technically just like moving or copying.
2. No creating yet. It will come, but not with this version.
When I commented on the previous part mentioning gpt, I wasn't really thinking about whether it was even supported or not. Nice to see that it is! =:^)
And similarly with btrfs, tho it's basically just detection at this point.
Thank you very much about this wonderful app.
I'm not sure you have understood the "how many passes" question. Many shredders will overwrite the data several times. This is because in magnetic hard disks it may be theoretically possible to recover overwritten data with a scanning tunnelling microscope. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_recovery#Recovering_overwritten_data but anything more than overwriting once with random data is probably over the top unless you have plans for a mini nuke on your HDD
Just overlooked the question, really.
It does one pass. Anything else I'd consider too much paranoia. ;-)
> Or support for setting volume labels on FAT32 file systems.
It would be nice to be able to set labels on any file system without having to format that system or that partition, but I don't know how to do this. Can this app do that, just rename a filesystem without destroying data?
Looking to be a nice app, thanks for helping to make KDE even better!
Sure it can.
In 1.0 (as well as 1.1) open a partition's properties page (by double-clicking it or by picking "properties" from the context menu or the partition menu) and set a new label. Click "OK" in the dialog and apply operations. That's it.
No data will be destroyed.
[...] New In KDE Partition Manager 1.1 (VI): The Fine Print In the Feature List There’s still more. Like full KIO support in all file dialogs. Or performance improvements in the GUI and the backend code. Or support for setting volume labels on FAT32 file systems. Or fully tested support for devices with more than 2^31 sectors. Or… [...]