Arch Linux

Iboga

Member

Registered: 2013-11-29

Posts: 8

[SOLVED] Partitioning Problems

Hey,

I decided to create an account and this topic because I haven't found an answer to my problem after hours of searching (wiki, beginner s guide, forum, etc)
Hopefully this won't be redundant.

I am installing Arch but I m stuck at the very beginning, partitioning.
I don't care for dual booting and my computer doesn t have UEFI or whatever so I followed the  beginner's guide instructions.
Here's what lsblk /dev/sda gives me now:
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda1 - 8:1         0   15G     0 part
sda2 - 8:2         0   916.5G 0 part
If I try mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 or 2 I get hundreds of lines of very similar errors

ata 01.00: status: { DRDY }
ata 01.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
ata 01.00: cmd 61/10:20:00:08:44/00:00:01:00:00/40 tag 4 ncq 8192 out (numbers vary)
               res 50/00:00:08:12:c8/00:04:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x50 (ATA bus error) (numbers vary)

If I try to make the partitions again:
fdisk /dev/sda
o, n, default(primary), default(1), default(2048), +15G
n, default, default(2), default(31459328), default(1953525167)
w
I get:
ata1.00: exception Emask 0x50 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x400800 action 0x6 frozen
ata1.00: irq_stat 0x08000000, interface fatal error
ata1: SError: { HostInt Handshk }
ata1.00: failed command WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
ata1.00: cmd 61/08:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 out
             res 50/00:08:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x50 (ATA bus error)
ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

With cgdisk /dev/sda:
Could not load partitions from '/dev/sda'! Aborting!
Using /sda1 or 2 attempts to convert it to GPT and shows partition type as free space.

Neither sda1 or sda2 are mounted.

Other than partitioning issues, my screen's background isn't black but bands of black with bits of blue and bands of purple with bits of black.

My hardware info in case it's relevant:
Motherboard  760GM-P23(FX)
Architectre: 86_64x
CPU  AMD Phenom II X4 945 Processor
Graphic card  AMD Radeon HD 6570
Ethernet Controller Realtek RTL8111/8168

Hope I haven't forgotten any information and that the solution to my problems can't already be found elsewhere.

thanks,

Iboga

P.S.: this was excrutiatingly tedious to write letter by letter on a mobile phone...

Last edited by Iboga (2013-11-30 17:23:11)

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: [SOLVED] Partitioning Problems

This sounds like disk failure to me.

Iboga

Member

Registered: 2013-11-29

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Partitioning Problems

This sounds like disk failure to me.

Hey,

Thanks for the reply.
I'm very new to Arch, what should I do?
Most of what I could find is related to recovering data ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/File_Recovery for example) but I don't need to.
Should I install a disk recovery software on a USB key and run it?
Should I try to put a different HDD in? I don't want to "break" another one..

Thanks,

Iboga

WorMzy

Administrator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 12,600

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Partitioning Problems

Try reseating the cables connecting the disk. check the data cable at both ends. Run smartctl on the disk to check it's health. Make sure that your powersupply is powerful enough for all your components.

---

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Spider.007

Member

Registered: 2004-06-20

Posts: 1,175

Re: [SOLVED] Partitioning Problems

[...]

P.S.: this was excrutiatingly tedious to write letter by letter on a mobile phone...

[ot]Using the live-cd you could install & run 'links' next time and you might be able to post a bit easier[/ot]

Last edited by Spider.007 (2013-11-30 15:03:47)

Iboga

Member

Registered: 2013-11-29

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Partitioning Problems

[...]

P.S.: this was excrutiatingly tedious to write letter by letter on a mobile phone...

[ot]Using the live-cd you could install & run 'links' next time and you might be able to post a bit easier[/ot]

Thanks for the advice got my laptop to work so it's alright.

Try reseating the cables connecting the disk. check the data cable at both ends. Run smartctl on the disk to check it's health. Make sure that your powersupply is powerful enough for all your components.

Thanks a lot! That seems to have worked. I disconnected and reconnected the HDD and now mkfs finished without problems.
I guess the cable wasn't put right.