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I have let the gparted to format my (entire) 3TB HDD ext4 disk connected over USB3.0. Can you please give me some estimation how long does it take to format the disk? There is no progress bar so I am no sure if the formatting is going all right. The hard disk is being formatted over 30 hours right now and in the program details there is just information about ongoing operation:

mkfs.ext4 -F -L "" /dev/sdb1

Generally speaking is it dangerous just for the disk's data to interrupt the gparted process or is it possible I will corrupt the file system if I power off the disk now?

Edit: I just realized there was misalignment sectors warning (probably in Gparted). So I will try to create the partition again. Do you think it is possible I got the IO errors because of that?

What is the best way to check disk health status? Is it sufficient to use:

smartctl -H /dev/sdX

And is there some difference between following commands:

mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdbX
mkfs.ex4 /dev/sdbX
mke4fs -t ext4 /dev/sdbX
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This is not normal.

First check your system logs (journalctl -xef or tail -f /var/log/syslog) whether you see (a large amount of) I/O errors, this could be a reason that the process hangs and point to (likely) a hardware issue.

If nothing suspicious, I'd open a second terminal and sudo killall gparted mkfs.ext4.

Then do a new format with sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1.

You might check man mkfs.ext4 to see if you want any tuning options for your purpose.

HTH.

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  • There is bunch of IO errors and Buffer IO errors in the log (but the disk is new so it is weird it is the hw issue). So is it ok to kill the mkfs command?
    – M_V
    Nov 18, 2020 at 21:24
  • Disk came dead...
    – M_V
    Nov 19, 2020 at 17:15
  • @M_V: Sorry to hear that. Since it's USB, you might try whether the problem is 1. the USB port (-> plug in to another USB or another computer); 2. the controller (-> remove disk from casing and attach directly with a SATA cable); 3. the disk (more likely if (1) and (2) still have errors)
    – ppenguin
    Nov 19, 2020 at 23:53
  • I have several disks and the other works with no problems and IO errors so it is definitely hdd problem, but thank you for help.
    – M_V
    Nov 20, 2020 at 6:41

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