I am trying to format a SanDisk 128GB SDXC card plugged into the internal SD card reader on a Toshiba Chromebook 2 running Crouton.
When I format to ext4 using gparted the operation never completes, I have to break the operation and get a warning that I am seriuusly damaging the file system. If I then try to format to FAT 32 it gives an error message. However, when I inplug the card and reinser it, then format to FAT 32 it does it it within a minute or so.
Are there any known problems with formating SD cards of this size on Ubuntu? Is there anyway I can get it to format to ext4? Or does it just take forever and I need to be patient and let the operation run (it's been at least ten minutes so far and doesn't appear to be doing anything)?
Edit:
This is what I am trying to do with the SD - is it essential to use ext4 for such an operation or would Fat32 work?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2242850
EDIT:
I tried using fdisk in Chrome OS.
I could successfully create a new partition but when I tried using mkfs.ext4 I get the same error message I get from gparted:
/dev/mmcblk1p1 is apparently in use by the system; will not make a filesystem here!
I've Googled the error and everything seems to relate to RAID drives and the fixes get a little above my head
EDIT
The following is the full output from gparted
Create Primary Partition #1 (ext4, 116.73 GiB) on /dev/mmcblk1 00:00:03 ( ERROR )
create empty partition 00:00:02 ( SUCCESS )
path: /dev/mmcblk1p1 start: 2048 end: 244809727 size: 244807680 (116.73 GiB) set partition type on /dev/mmcblk1p1 00:00:01 ( SUCCESS )
new partition type: ext4 create new ext4 file system 00:00:00 ( ERROR )
mkfs.ext4 -j -O extent -L "" /dev/mmcblk1p1
mke2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011) /dev/mmcblk1p1 is apparently in use by the system; will not make a filesystem here!
EDIT:
Here is the output from the instructions below
(precise)connor@localhost:~$ sudo umount /dev/mmcblk1
[sudo] password for connor:
umount: /dev/mmcblk1: not mounted
(precise)connor@localhost:~$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=1M count=100
100+0 records in
100+0 records out
104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 15.8013 s, 6.6 MB/s
(precise)connor@localhost:~$ sudo mkfs.ext4 -L "J Connor" /dev/mmcblk1
mke2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)
Discarding device blocks: 4096/30601216
The system just sits at this point and doesn't do anything. If I remove the SD card the chromebook reboots.
EDIT:
I tried again, this time a different result (sort of) - when I checked the Chrome OS file system this time the device was not mounted like last time. However I got the same error that I get from gparted:
(precise)connor@localhost:~$ sudo umount /dev/mmcblk1
[sudo] password for connor:
umount: /dev/mmcblk1: not mounted
(precise)connor@localhost:~$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=1M count=100
100+0 records in
100+0 records out
104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 0.171444 s, 612 MB/s
(precise)connor@localhost:~$ sudo mkfs.ext4 -L "J Connor" /dev/mmcblk1
mke2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)
/dev/mmcblk1 is apparently in use by the system; will not make a filesystem here!
(precise)connor@localhost:~$
parted
orfdisk
?fdisk
description.