Reformatting my brain

Today I tried to do a very simple task using Ubuntu. I had purchased a new compact flash media card and I wanted to format it as well as my old ones to bring them back to original condition. I popped them into the media bay of my computer and attempted to run a simple reformat command on them from nautilus. I then realized that the reformat command was a reflex of my using Windows/msdos for so many years and that I'd have to try a new approach.

A simple task required a short search, which brought me to a simple solution.

First: Install gparted, either from synaptic or the Ubuntu package download page
Second: Run gparted and find the media card. Mine was listed as /dev/sdc. Unmount the drive.
Third: Choose Partition>Format to: There will be a list of choices for how you prefer to format the card from FAT16/ FAT32 to ext2 and linux-swap.

I formatted my compact flash to FAT 32 and it works well in my PDA.

I then decided to change the name of the card as I didn't like the default name it had. Another "simple solution" that I discovered. I couldn't just right click on the media card and rename it. I did find a way to accomplish it though.

1: Install mtools from synaptic.
2: Open a terminal window and sudo su to become root.
3: Unmount the card with the 'umount' command
4: Run the command that will rename the drive using mlabel -i /dev/sdc1 ::AximCF
(The drive on my PC is /dev/sdc1)
5: Remove the media from PC and reconnect it to see the new name, and take joy in the fact that the simple tasks make life worth living.