bad block/superblock on new disk?

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 23 May 2020 03:33:18 M. Fioretti wrote:

> Hello list,
>
> This is another field in which I had lots of experience, but... years
> ago, so I really appreciate some pointer/refresh, because the online
> searches I already tried all give old threads (don't even mention
> ext4...)
>
> I just got a brand new hard drive, and a brand new external enclosure
> for it. I mounted the drive in the enclosure, attached the power
> supply, connected it via USB to my Ubuntu box, powered it on, and then
>
> went to format it:
> :~$ sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdb
>
> I got no error, tried to give it a label with e2label, and got an
> error. Unfortunately, I closed that shell by mistake, so I canno copy
> its output.
>
> So I tried to reformat the drive in another shell, with the same 
commands:
> :~$ sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdb
>
> mke2fs 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
> /dev/sdb is entire device, not just one partition!
> Proceed anyway? (y,n)
> Warning: could not erase sector 2: Attempt to write block to
> filesystem resulted in short write Creating filesystem with 244190646
> 4k blocks and 61054976 inodes Filesystem UUID:
> 1546a082-703f-433b-afca-41533eaac3f1
> Superblock backups stored on blocks:
> 	   32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632,
> 2654208, 4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616,
> 78675968, 102400000, 214990848
>
> Allocating group tables: done
> Warning: could not read block 0: Attempt to read block from filesystem
> resulted in short read Warning: could not erase sector 0: Attempt to
> write block to filesystem resulted in short write Writing inode
> tables: done
> Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
> Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information:    0/7453
> Warning, had trouble writing out superblocks.
>
> Indeed, running e2label again gives this error:
>
> sudo e2label /dev/sdb b01wes
> e2label: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read
> while trying to open /dev/sdb Couldn't find valid filesystem
> superblock.
>
> What now? Should I use e2fsck to repair the file system? If yes, how?
> If not why, and what else to do?
>
> TIA,
> Marco
Even if you are going to format the whole drive to one filesystem, you 
still need a partition table.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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