hce wrote:
> 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.
>
>
250G partition should not be a problem at all with ext3, depending on
architecture, ext3 can go as high as 32T. It seems as though you might
have some hardware issues though. Have you tested each disk in your
raid separately?