New USB drive formatting

[Dave M]

What is the procedure for formatting a new USB drive? I did the following 
and it looks like it worked:

* Installing a new usb hard drive
   - Turn on usb drive
   - Plug in drives usb cable
   - See if drive is recognized and what device it is (sda, sdb etc)
     $dmesg
   - If the drive mounts, unmount it
      $sudo umount /dev/sda
   - make ext3 file system
      $sudo mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sda
   - Unplug and re-plug drive
   - It should mount automatically

But when I did $mkfs and when I do $dmesg I see a warning that there is no 
partition table:

[17623262.060000] scsi22 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[17623262.060000] usb-storage: device found at 30
[17623262.060000] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[17623266.764000]   Vendor: ST350063  Model: 0A                Rev: 0811
[17623266.764000]   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI 
revision: 00
[17623266.768000] SCSI device sda: 976773168 512-byte hdwr sectors (500108 MB)
[17623266.768000] sda: assuming drive cache: write through
[17623266.768000] SCSI device sda: 976773168 512-byte hdwr sectors (500108 MB)
[17623266.768000] sda: assuming drive cache: write through
[17623266.768000]  sda: unknown partition table
[17623266.788000] sd 21:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
[17623266.788000] sd 21:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
[17623266.792000] usb-storage: device scan complete
[17623267.420000] kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
[17623267.420000] EXT3 FS on sda, internal journal
[17623267.420000] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
[17623268.836000] usb 5-2.1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and 
address 31!

But it looks like it is working. Is this a problem? Should I have 
partitioned the drive first?

Also, is there a way to do a surface test to verify that the drive and file 
system are good? Something along the lines of Disk-Doctor?

-------------------------------
Dave M
Davem (at) Mich (dot) Com
Ann Arbor, Mich. USA

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