Nathan Moore wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been fighting with a series of Western Digital disks for the last few
> weeks.  The general problem is that after allocating the disk as one large
> partition, formatting the partition fails.
> 
> The specific failure is as follows:
> 
> [root@scania ~]# mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hdb1
> mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
> Filesystem label=
> OS type: Linux
> Block size=4096 (log=2)
> Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
> 61063168 inodes, 122096000 blocks
> 6104800 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
> First data block=0
> Maximum filesystem blocks=0
> 3727 block groups
> 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
> 16384 inodes per group
> Superblock backups stored on blocks:
>         32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632,
> 2654208,
>         4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,
>         102400000
> 
> Writing inode tables:  445/3727
> 
> Although there is no error message, the mkfs command freezes up the machine,
> and nothing further can be done on the system without cycling the power.
> 
> I've tried running WD's diagnostic on the disks, and this sometimes turns up
> a problem.  These are the 2'nd RMA'ed pair of drives that I've gotten from
> WD though - the problem is persistent across multiple drives - it seems
> weird that the replacement drives also have the same problem when being
> formatted.
> 
> Are there implicit limits in mkfs about how big the partition can be?  Any
> other ideas about why the drive would refuse to properly format?
> 
> A few technical notes:
> 
> The drives are ~500GB IDE drives, Western Digital 500GB, 7200RMPM IDE
> UltraATA100
> 
> The system is running SL5.0, i386
> 
> Motherboard is ABit NF-95
> 
> Machine has 2 other hard disks on the SATA bus.

Seems to me worth trying another brand, maybe Seagate or Hitachi, my 
current favourites.

-- 

Cheers
John

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