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Thread: Trouble formatting blank hard drive

  1. #11
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    Re: Trouble formatting blank hard drive

    Quote Originally Posted by sudodus View Post
    Did you also create a new partition table?

    In that case you might succeed better if you wipe the first megabyte of the drive. This should remove anything that might distract gparted.
    Code:
    sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=1024 count=1024
    where /dev/sdx is the drive you want to wipe, it used to be /dev/sdf but, check again because if you make a mistake, another drive will be wiped (and it cannot be repaired).

    Then try as before with gparted.

    If still no go, maybe there is some problem with the electronics of the external USB casing or the USB system in your computer, and you need to resort to sidzen's advice to mount the drive internally.
    Hi sudodus, I gave this a go but unfortunately had the same result.

  2. #12
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    Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

    Re: Trouble formatting blank hard drive

    Quote Originally Posted by montag dp View Post
    . . .

    I'd like to avoid that, as I thought this would be a few minute task. Would I load SystemRescueCD onto a USB or CD and use it to boot, then create the file system from there? Why do you think it wouldn't work in repeated attempts via USB?

    Thanks everyone for your help.
    To answer this part of your question:

    download the ISO for SysRescCD and either use unetbootin to make it bootable to a USB stick or burn the ISO to a blank CD then change BIOS to boot from optical drive. Once into SysRescCD, hit <Enter> a few times for default until getting to the multi-colored prompt. There, one may use the dd command referenced bu sudodus ; then type in <startx> to start GUI; and then, in the yellow-colored window with prompt, type in <gparted> to get to the partitioning tool;

    exclosure to hdd necessitates input/output going through a small circuit board -- I would just as soon bypass this potential source of headaches, myself.

    Now it can be seen what was meant when I said, "Saves time in the long run!"
    Nonsense is an assertion of man's spiritual freedom in spite of all the oppressions of circumstance-- Aldous Huxley
    The real power of Linux lies in the command line

  3. #13
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    Re: Trouble formatting blank hard drive

    Still no go

    I suggest again that there might be some problem with the electronics of the external USB casing or the USB system in your computer, and you need to resort to sidzen's advice to mount the drive internally.

    Good luck

  4. #14
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    Ubuntu Development Release

    Re: Trouble formatting blank hard drive

    When in doubt, nuke it

    Well, when I have hard disks that behave unruly I resort to using Gparted to erase the entire drive.
    It takes a while and once done I reboot and partition afresh.

    Works for me and as you have nothing to lose but your time you may wish to consider this as a 'last-resort' option.
    (personally I now use it as standard 'first-resort' whenever I aquire a new-to-me drive.)

  5. #15
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    Re: Trouble formatting blank hard drive

    Quote Originally Posted by robert shearer View Post
    When in doubt, nuke it

    Well, when I have hard disks that behave unruly I resort to using Gparted to erase the entire drive.
    It takes a while and once done I reboot and partition afresh.

    Works for me and as you have nothing to lose but your time you may wish to consider this as a 'last-resort' option.
    (personally I now use it as standard 'first-resort' whenever I aquire a new-to-me drive.)
    Hey Robert,

    How do you erase it? I already deleted all the partitions; is this something different?

    Anyway, I'm marking this as solved. For the heck of it, I booted up Windows 7 and tried formatting it there. There was a "quick format" option which I unchecked. It took awhile to format, but it worked exactly as it should and the volume mounts automatically in Linux. I'm still puzzled about why all of the Linux tools I tried failed in the same way (gparted and KDE partition manager). Apparently sometimes Windows is the best tool for the job.
    Last edited by montag dp; January 17th, 2013 at 03:34 PM.

  6. #16
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    Re: Trouble formatting blank hard drive

    Hi,

    Hmm I don't see any usb-hdd adapters in the list you posted. You sure you had the hdd hooked up when you ran the command?

    I'm asking, because the symptoms are almost exactly the same with my problematic usb-hdd. Formatting it in linux fails, but on windows is works. After that linux will see it, BUT write anything into the drive from linux, and it will corrupt.

    Try writing some files to the disk on linux, boot up on windows, and if everything still works perfect after that, I think you're safe.

    The offending usb-sata adapter in my case was super top M6116.. a bug in the linux drivers.

  7. #17
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    Re: Trouble formatting blank hard drive

    Quote Originally Posted by Peltsi View Post
    Hi,

    Hmm I don't see any usb-hdd adapters in the list you posted. You sure you had the hdd hooked up when you ran the command?

    I'm asking, because the symptoms are almost exactly the same with my problematic usb-hdd. Formatting it in linux fails, but on windows is works. After that linux will see it, BUT write anything into the drive from linux, and it will corrupt.

    Try writing some files to the disk on linux, boot up on windows, and if everything still works perfect after that, I think you're safe.

    The offending usb-sata adapter in my case was super top M6116.. a bug in the linux drivers.
    Silly me, I should have realized that I needed to have it plugged in when running that command. I checked it and sure enough it is the same super top adapter. I wrote a file to it in linux and when I tried it in Windows again, it said it needs to be formatted. So it looks like the same problem you experienced. The good thing in my case is that this will be for my wife, who uses Mac.

    Out of curiosity, though, I'm guessing that even if I formatted the hard drive through the sata port on the laptop, it would still become corrupted after I used it in Linux as an external hard drive?

  8. #18
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    Re: Trouble formatting blank hard drive

    Quote Originally Posted by montag dp View Post
    ...

    Out of curiosity, though, I'm guessing that even if I formatted the hard drive through the sata port on the laptop, it would still become corrupted after I used it in Linux as an external hard drive?
    Probably yes, with that external casing. It is possible that the bug affects only some file systems, so that it would work with others.

    But with casings of other brands, for example IcyBox or Akasa, you should have no problems.

  9. #19
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    Re: Trouble formatting blank hard drive

    Quote Originally Posted by sudodus View Post
    Probably yes, with that external casing. It is possible that the bug affects only some file systems, so that it would work with others.

    But with casings of other brands, for example IcyBox or Akasa, you should have no problems.
    I got this one because it was cheap and had good reviews. It is made by Vantec; my other external hard drive is Rosewill and I've had no problems with that one. I'll just have to remember in the future to stay away from this brand because of this issue.

  10. #20
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    Jul 2012
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    Re: Trouble formatting blank hard drive

    If you have a launchpad account, could you please add yourself to the list of people the bug affects?

    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...x/+bug/1082215

    Maybe, if enough subscribe to the bug, someone with better knowledge will do something to it. The most frustrating thing is, the problematic part in the source code is known, but it is not being fixed

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