Issues Formatting a New 8TB HDD – Any Tips?
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CuriousTraveler93
I recently purchased a new 8TB HDD and ran into some trouble while trying to format it. Initially, I attempted to set up a partition, but I kept receiving an "fdisk: failed to write disklabel: Input/output error" message. After that, I shifted gears to format the disk to ext4, but after a while, I encountered an error saying, "mkfs.ext4: Invalid argument while trying to create journal." This HDD is brand new, and nothing has been written on it yet. I started using the "Disks" app on Ubuntu 24.02, but it seems to be taking forever. I did go for a quick format option. Considering my past experience, formatting my previous 1TB HDD only took about 2 minutes, so this lengthy process seems unusual. Could there be a chance that the HDD is faulty?
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Was this HDD a great deal or something?
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It’s possible that the HDD might have been damaged during shipping. Some folks have suggested returning it for a replacement, especially since there have been reports of used drives being sold as new, which could lead to reliability issues.
HDDHero91: Yeah, I think I’ll exchange it just in case. I got it from Best Buy, so it should be straightforward!
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You might be running into issues because of the specific tools you’re using. Try using 'parted' or 'gdisk' on the command line, or even 'gparted' in the GUI. I personally have had good luck with gparted on the desktop for formatting.
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CuriousTraveler93: Not really, just a usual sale price. I paid $115 for a Seagate – same as what I got a few months ago and it's been fine!