creation of ext4 filesystem takes 20+ hours???

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Thu, 2022-10-27 at 01:46 -0500, Aaron Rainbolt wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 11:40 PM Marco Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:
> > A, 320 GB, on /dev/sda, previously hosting both windows and ubuntu 20.04
> > 
> > 20 hours later, it's still doing it, the little circle that replaces the cursor slowly spinning...
> 
> 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.

To reformat a disk shouldn't include to wipe the disk first.
Due to wear-leveling wiping a SSD isn't done by overwriting data, it's
done by changing the SSD's internal en/decryption key. This requires a
tool from the SSD vendor or hdparm. The procedure is named "ATA Secure
Erase" and just takes a few seconds, assuming the command isn't blocked,
but usually it is blocked to avoid accidents.
FWIW filling a 320 GB SSD with zeros doesn't take 20 hours. Overwriting
the complete SSD many, many times with (random) patterns and finally
with zeros can take very long, depending on the count of patterns used
for overwriting. Don't fear "unnecessarily wearing". As already pointed
out, it's unnecessary and completely useless, but read and write cycles
are overrated. Light switches, door locks, washing machine engines,
shutter curtains and HDDs wear out, too. If you don't worry about
wearing out light switches, door locks, washing machine engines,shutter
curtains and HDDs, than you shouldn't worry about the lifespan of your
SSDs.