error after fdisk w and mkfs on drive

[Diana Townsend]

I have a new drive that I am trying to make partition for backup. We use suse 10 and I followed the same thing I've been doing for over a year now. I run the fdisk and that completes normal. I then run the w (write) and that works normal. I then run the mkfs -t ext2 /dev/sda1 and when that is done I get a message Writing inode tables: Done
ext2fs_mkdir: attemp to read block from file system resulted in short read while creating root dir

Then says synchlinux: /media/disk # fsck -f -y /dev/sda1
fsck 1.38 (30-JUN-2005)
fsck.ext2: No such file or directory while trying to open dev/sda1

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem
If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (not a swap or ufs file system) then the superblock is corrupt and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock!
e2fsck -b 8193 (device)
fsck.ext2 /dev/sda1 failed (status 0X Run manually!

I have no idea what they are telling me to do. Any help would be appreciated!

[rcgreen]

I would just do it over. Try making the file system again, and
if it fails, delete and create the partition again.

[Diana Townsend]

Tried that. Get the same error. I'm wondering if my HD enclosure is not working properly because if I do a dmesg | less command I get rejecting IO to dead device.

I put another drive on the system and it picks it right up.

[rcgreen]

Yeah, definitely, if communication to the drive isn't reliable,
you'll get all sorts of errors.

[Diana Townsend]

Thanks. I am going to try putting this HD in another enclosure and see what happens.

[D-cat]

ext2fs_mkdir: attemp to read block from file system resulted in short read while creating root dir

Where everything works until that point, I'm inclined to suspect a bad sector.

mkfs.ext2 -c -c -f -y /dev/sda1

This will byte flip then zero every sector before making the file system. It's slow, but if there's a physical error on the drive, this will find and mark it.

[Diana Townsend]

Thanks I will give that a try.