As of the latest Gnome version sorting Hard drives in the Files/Nautilus sidebar is no longer possible, it used to be possible via using labels in the Gnome Disks utility to rename your drives and they would sort themselves alphanumerically, for people with many disks not being able to sort them is chaotic.
Would adding this option back or creating a new one be possible?
This is about this change in Nautilus 49: gtk/placessidebar: Sort mounts by device name (67292523) · Commits · GNOME / Files · GitLab
Developer @kabushawarib explained why the change was made on Reddit:
The reason why I changed it is that most people don’t name their partitions and would previously pile up in a weird way since they start with a number indicating their size, and sorting on that was not useful.
Sorting on device name first is better for people not naming their partitions.
Users who don’t assign labels to their partitions may not rely on sorting for organization. However, for those who do use labels to manage multiple drives, the removal of the sorting option significantly reduces their ability to keep systems organized. Restoring or providing an alternative way to sort by labels would preserve a valuable workflow for this group.
Has any potential solution been discussed?
No. Open an issue and use the shortcomings template.
I can’t find any instructions on how or where to open an issue or what a “shortcomings” template is?
Do i post again here on “Applications / Nautilus”?
I already opened an issue: Sidebar doesn't use GIO's existing sort keys (#4092) · Issues · GNOME / Files · GitLab
That’s great, looks like somebody is willing to help but they’re asking you for guidance.
Maybe option to reorder manually by dragging (like bookmarks) would be great also
Also I found nice feature in Dolphin (Plasma file manager) - it has separated sidebar category for internal (sata, nvme) and external (usb, esata, etc.) drives. I think it’s cool feature that distinguishes external drives from internal faster and it would be nice to see the same in Nautilus
That would be a very intuitive way of sorting that most people would do naturally.