Comment 9 for bug 253599

Andrew Starr-Bochicchio wrote on 2009-10-05:
> maybe there is an issue in icon-naming-utils. Breathe has a gnome-dev-removable-usb,
> but gnome-dev-harddisk-usb is a link to drive-harddisk generated by icon-naming-utils.

icon-naming-utils is a script for maintaining *backwards* compatibility with old desktop icon themes, while migrating to the names specified in the Icon Naming Specification. According to the Specification devices are named without gnome-dev-* , so, icon themes should use name drive-removable-media-usb instead of gnome-dev-removable-usb, media-flash-cf instead of gnome-dev-media-cf, etc, look at http://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/icon-naming-spec-latest.html#devices

icon-naming-utils are for generating legacy gnome-dev-* symlinks from standard icon names, listed in the Specification, but not for generating drive-removable* or media-flash* from legacy gnome-dev-*, see legacy-icon-mapping.xml (/usr/share/icon-naming-utils/legacy-icon-mapping.xml)

Finally I completely understood how to solve this big issue:
1. At first we need to fix icon themes to use standard icon names, listed at http://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/icon-naming-spec-latest.html#devices instead of legacy gnome-dev-* names ! Look at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=506532#c6 for more info.
2. When icon themes will use standard names then we could fix second part of this issue - gvfs libraries, which use the drive-harddisk-usb icon name, for usb storage devices that aren't hard disks, see http://git.gnome.org./cgit/gvfs/tree/monitor/hal/ghaldrive.c and http://git.gnome.org./cgit/gvfs/tree/monitor/hal/ghalmount.c