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balena-io / etcher

Flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives, safely and easily.
https://etcher.io/
Apache License 2.0
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Etcher should warn that the disk will be formatted or erased #3289

Open pdcastro opened 4 years ago

pdcastro commented 4 years ago

Many users (especially those in the IoT community) understand that "Flashing" a disk means reformatting / erasing it, but not all users do (see attached support thread). Etcher uses only the term "flashing" on the GUI, whereas more commonly, the terms "formatting" and "erasing" are used (especially respectively on Windows and macOS).

Perhaps a confirmation pop-up could be raised when the button "Flash!" is clicked, and this pop-up could read something along the lines of:

  Flashing the selected drive will reformat / erase it, and all existing data on the drive will be lost.

[ Confirm ]     [ Cancel ]

[✓] Don't show this prompt again for 30 days  

jellyfish-bot commented 4 years ago

[pdcastro] This issue has attached support thread https://jel.ly.fish/8a6d37c5-8c9f-4e07-821d-6dc98dbd498b

lurch commented 4 years ago

See also #3049

FloMiau commented 4 years ago

Nobody likes warnings. Maybe call the button "Erase and Flash" or something like that.

dtischler commented 4 years ago

Adding an additional data point here, as a user made this same request in the comments on one of our blog posts, http://disq.us/p/2bzxux1

jharris1993 commented 4 years ago

Nobody likes warnings. Maybe call the button "Erase and Flash" or something like that.

Au contrare!

What people DON'T like is to see valuable data go "poof!" because someone doesn't know that "flash" means "nuke-and-destroy".

Warnings are annoying, but - like sudo - they exist for a reason.

Additional thought: Placing a "hide the warning" selection within the same dialog as the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons is giving Murphy's Law a free ride towards disaster!

All it takes is a slight tremor on a touch-screen, an errant palm rub on a touch-pad, or a three year old bumping the hand holding the mouse to send an important and necessary warning into nowhere-land.

A better choice is to place it within a configuration setting such as:

Warn user that flashing a device is a destructive process [ X ] Always warn [    ] Warn only once during a session [    ] Never warn

This let's the advanced user punt on the warnings, a somewhat advanced user opt for a single warning, and the non-technical user get all warnings.

Of course, "Always warn" should be the default.