Re: Mistaken partition and format process

[hce <webmail.hce@gmail.com>]

On 3/10/08, Douglas A. Tutty <dtutty@porchlight.ca> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 09, 2008 at 05:32:25PM +1100, hce wrote:
>  > I am partitioning and formating an external HDD. I made a stupid
>  > mistake, I called "mkfs.ext3 /dev/md0" before calling "fdisk
>  > /dev/md0". Now it seems that the process stopped at following last
>  > line "Writing inode tables:   14/1864":
>
>
> /dev/md0 would be the first raid array.  You have an external drive as
>  part of a raid array?  I'm not saying that its not useful, I'm just
>  clarifying.

Yes.

>  Without running fdisk to create a partition, you've attempted to write a
>  filesystem on the whole device.  There shouldn't be a problem with this
>  so I don't know what the problem is.

The process was freezed at "Writing inode tables: ...", I was afaid to
cause an encosure and external HDD damange if I kill the process. I
waited for 5 hours, the format process was still stuck at the last
line, I have no choice but kill the process before going to sleep. I
could not event kill the process, and could not event turn my PC off,
the whole system was stuck. I had to physically switched the PC power
off. It was a mess.

Anyway, now I am restarting the fdisk and mkfs.ext3. I made only one
partition for the whole 250 G, that the command "mkfs.ext3 /dev/md0"
once again stuck at last line of "Writing inode tables: ...". I can
only thought of following problems:

(a) The partition of 250 G is too big, the debian system or encolusre
or HDD is not eable to do a format on 250 G. Is it correct? If so,
what is the largest the parttion I can make in Debian 4.0 system?

(b) The enclusure or HDD is not functional properly?

(c) My command to partition and format is not correct?

Thanks Doug.