Problems when attempting to format external USB Samsung M3 disk

English Hardware
1

I bought a Samsung M3 external USB3 disk drive that comes pre-formatted with some flavour of DOS. I would like it to be formatted in the same way as the internal drive to avoid compatibility issues when backing up data. I rarely need to format disks so I don’t know the best way to do it.

It may be that the drive is faulty but it seemed to work all right when it was configured for Windows and I have no reason to think that a fault has suddenly occurred. Could there be a generic problem with Samsung M3 disks? I could not find mention of this drive in Portal:Hardware - openSUSE.

I tried 2 different methods to format it:

  • mkfs.ext4 - This appeared to work but gave a ‘group descriptors corrupted!’ error when I try to mount the drive after rebooting.
  • YaST partitioner - This gave error code -3009

I am using openSUSE 13.1 64bit and I don’t think there is anything too unusual about my hardware setup.

I ran mkfs.ext4 as follows:

linux-hr12:~ # mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1
mke2fs 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013) 
warning: 424 blocks unused.
          
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
30583008 inodes, 122093568 blocks
6104677 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=4294967296
3726 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8208 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208, 
        4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968, 
        102400000

Allocating group tables: done                            
Writing inode tables: done                            
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done     

linux-hr12:~ #

The error messages are:

martin@linux-hr12:~> dmesg | tail
    7.198623]  sdb: sdb1
    7.199502] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found
    7.199503] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
    7.199504] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
   12.897977] EXT4-fs (sdb1): ext4_check_descriptors: Checksum for group 384 failed (43642!=43607)
   12.897980] EXT4-fs (sdb1): group descriptors corrupted!
   30.284778] EXT4-fs (sdb1): ext4_check_descriptors: Checksum for group 384 failed (43642!=43607)
   30.284781] EXT4-fs (sdb1): group descriptors corrupted!
   52.277251] EXT4-fs (sdb1): ext4_check_descriptors: Checksum for group 384 failed (43642!=43607)
   52.277254] EXT4-fs (sdb1): group descriptors corrupted!
martin@linux-hr12:~>

I have put the full sequence of events on this page:

I also recorded my attempt to use YaST partitioner on this page.

Do you know what I might have done wrong and how do I fix it? I would appreciate any help.

Thanks,
Martin

2

For me the strange thing here is that the first time you made the fs, it went OK and the second time (YaST does of course the same as mkfs) it seems to go wrong.

Hardware?

3

i have the same issue, were you able to fix it?

if i format the disk as ntfs everything works ok, if i format as ext4 i cannot use it, badblocks shows no broken sector

4

Is it really the same issue? Is it the same make, size, & model of external drive?

Is it openSUSE 13.1 64bit?

Is it the same model of computer or laptop?

If the answer to any of these questions are “No”, then your best help will come along if you start your own thread and give the precise answers to the above questions, and also tell what utility you are using to format the drive.

We also need to know:

MBR partition table or GPT partition table?

5

And to add:

As it is logical that you want to have the best exposure of your problm t o your fellow users here on the forums, it is best to start a new thread instead of hanging a post at the end of a very old one (like this). It is a sort of miracle that people found your post. But people will look at new threads if they are started.