mke2fs on an old machine...

[roibm]

Hello...

I have quite an old system... 486DX4 100 w 32MB RAM
and the HDD is an 815MB Seagate from '96 or '97, don't remember exactly.

My problem is that when I try mke2fs I wait several hours and nothing, I
think it hangs or something like this(once I left it over night, hoping maybe
maybe hehe, in vain)

I tried this with slackware 8 and redhat 6.2, both the very same thing.
I can format this hdd under DOS(boot disk only) and it's no problem.
Also, this HDD has some 40KB of bads and the BIOS doesn't know of low level format 🙁

Any idea how to make it happen(make mke2fs work)

PS: Linux found the hdd and I can partition it both with fdisk and disk druid.

 

[Nothinman]

Did you tell the install to check for badblocks?

 

[roibm]

I tried both ways: with and without checking for bad blocks.
The same result unfortunately 🙁

 

[Nothinman]

Did you check the other virtual consoles for error messages?

 

[roibm]

Nope.
But I think there are no other virtual consoles during the installation, or are there?

 

[Nothinman]

I havn't seen an installation that hasn't had any yet.

 

[roibm]

Then it's time to check. Thank you 😉