SOLVED: creation of ext4 filesystem takes 20+ hours???

[Tom Mitchell]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2022 at 9:51 AM M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 18:29:55 PM +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
>
> > <long explanation deleted for brevity>
>
> thanks Liam, and all the others who stepped in.
>
> Everything works as desired now. Below is the detailed description of
> what I did, which is basically the same instructions provided by Liam,
> in a more compact and hopefully readable format, and with a few extra
> details. Comments welcome, of course
....
> ## ON SDA
> - select /dev/sda
...
> ## ON SDB:
>

There is yet another slightly heavy handed option.
The partition table at the beginning of a disk can generally be fixed.

However I often step on it with blocks of null data.
   dd if=/dev/zero bs-1024K count=10 of=/dev/sdy
   dd if=/dev/zero bs-1024K count=10 of=/dev/sdz
Change y and z to a real device after verifying yours.
Then default install partitioning and mount rules  only need to be specified
in contrast to changes.  The presence of a filesystem or partition
table triggers
caution in tools that touch disks for extra steps.

Some with spare recycled disks can play and test install on disks
built for Windows(pick a version) , Solaris, Linux( pick a version and
distro) .  Some old disk types can require manual reset of size
cyl/heads and stuff thus the notion of heavy handed.  Remember not all
devices have sane inquiry APIs.