trying to format 2nd drive (ntfs) and failing miserably

[bigbandwith]

I installed 8.10 and I love it. I am ready to put my media my 300g drive so I am trying to reformat to ext3. It has XP on it now and I can mount it. When I try gparted it fails. When I do a terminal session /dev/sd* gives me a permission denied. Any thoughts. Since I can mount it, do I even need to reformat? Thanks.

[bodhi.zazen]

what error message are you getting?

To format the partition you may need to use sudo

try mkfs.ext3

mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1

[bigbandwith]

The error is basically a popup that says there was an error perfoming this opperation. Here is the log that I saved. This is the error before it starts listing all the sectors.
---------------------------------------------
GParted 0.3.8

Libparted 1.8.9

Create Primary Partition #1 (ext2, 279.46 GiB) on /dev/sdb 00:04:43 ( ERROR )

create empty partition 00:00:00 ( SUCCESS )

path: /dev/sdb1
start: 63
end: 586067264
size: 586067202 (279.46 GiB)
set partitiontype on /dev/sdb1 00:00:00 ( SUCCESS )

new partitiontype: ext2
create new ext2 filesystem 00:04:43 ( ERROR )

mkfs.ext2 -L "" /dev/sdb1

Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
18317312 inodes, 73258400 blocks
3662920 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=0
2236 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616

[bigbandwith]

Here is what I got when I tried mkfs.ext3

stevep@Lime:~$ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1
mke2fs 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
18317312 inodes, 73258400 blocks
3662920 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=0
2236 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616

Warning: could not read block 0: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read
Writing inode tables: done
ext2fs_mkdir: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while creating root dir
stevep@Lime:~$

[bodhi.zazen]

That is a new one in me

See if these links help :

http://segva.blogspot.com/2007/05/ho...al-hdd-on.html

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6373612

On that last thread, see post #5 (the last one)

[caljohnsmith]

I would recommend checking the health of your sdb drive just to see if that is possibly the issue. You can do that from Ubuntu by doing the following:

sudo apt-get install smartmontools

First do the following to save the current health status parameters of your HDD to a file on your desktop:

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb > ~/Desktop/sdb_health_before_test.txt

Then run:

sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sdb

That command will immediately terminate while the HDD begins its self-test, and it could take quite a while. You can monitor the progress with:

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb | grep -A 1 -i "self-test execution status"

Once the above command says the test is done, then do:

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb > ~/Desktop/sdb_health_after_test.txt
sudo smartctl -H /dev/sdb

And please post the contents of the two files on your desktop so we can see the results.

[bodhi.zazen]

Thank you for helping caljohnsmith

[caljohnsmith]

Thank you for helping caljohnsmith

You're certainly welcome, bodhi.zazen, I just try to help when I can. Hope I wasn't intruding.

[bodhi.zazen]

You're certainly welcome, bodhi.zazen, I just try to help when I can. Hope I wasn't intruding.

You know that you are not intruding, i appreciate both your expertise and your time as a volunteer.

[kansasnoob]

You know that you are not intruding, i appreciate both your expertise and your time as a volunteer.

We need more "intruders" like caljohnsmith!

He knows more than I'll ever be able to forget!