Chromebooks Can Soon Format Removable Disks into Single Volume

Chromebooks will soon be able to format SD cards and other removable disks with multiple volumes, into one single volume.

The Problem

Ever tried to format an SD card that you used to create Chrome OS recovery media?

You would end up with two separate volumes after formatting. This is true for SD cards or USB drives with other operating systems.

You will soon be able to format media with two volumes into a single volume. I spotted this feature in the Chromium Gerrit today.

“[partition-as-single] Add FilesPartitionAsSingle feature flag.”

“Adds util method and integration test load time data entry to check feature in the Foreground page as well.”

Luckily for us, the feature request bug or the bug report is also publicly available and has a detailed account of this issue.

“Issue 491043: Add ability to format an SD card / flash drive as a single volume”

To test this feature before the roll-out, Chrome OS is adding an experimental flag to the chrome://flags page.

“Enable Partitioning Removable Disks: Enable partitioning of removable disks with single partition”

The expiry milestone for this flag is set to Chrome OS 94. Hence, we may not see this feature ready and working for public consumption anytime soon.

Nevertheless, this will be a useful feature to have in those tricky situations that we might face.