creation of ext4 filesystem takes 20+ hours???

[Aaron Rainbolt]

On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 11:40 PM Marco Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> yesterday morning I put Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS on a USB key, and installed it on the computer I'm using right now. Everything went smoothly.
>
> Then I took a T430 thinkpad with two SSDs inside, let's call them A and C
>
> A, 320 GB, on /dev/sda, previously hosting both windows and ubuntu 20.04
>
> C, 64 GB, on /dev/sdc
>
> (/dev/sdb would be the USB key)
>
> I wanted to use all of A as /home, so before starting the install I deleted its windows partition, and expanded the ubuntu one to fill the whole drive. Then I started the installation, and told the installer to:
>
> 1) place boot loader and ubuntu on the C drive
>
> 2) reformat /dev/sda, make an ext4 filesystem on it and make it /home
>
> the installer said "OK, no problem, but this may take a long time"
>
> 20 hours later, it's still doing it, the little circle that replaces the cursor slowly spinning...
>
> Is this normal? Did I do something wrong, and damaged the drive? ? Should I still wait, or do what, shut down and restart?
>
> Thanks,
> Marco

I would stop the installation at the earliest possible opportunity,
you're probably unnecessarily wearing out your SSD. It's probably
zeroing the drive, which is entirely unneeded in most instances. I'm
guessing that "reformat /dev/sda" means "wipe it entirely", which is
unnecessary, just make a new partition table and create a new ext4
partition on it, assigned to /home.

-- 
Aaron Rainbolt
Lubuntu and Ubuntu Member
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