I am in the process of installing Slackware 8.0, and have successfully identified and formated my swap space... but, the formatting of the root partition (6gig) seems to be taking longer than it should. It's been going for about 45min... is that normal, or is something wrong? I know that if there are bad blocks, it'll take longer than not, but is there a way to know if it is actually doing anything? The ssystem still responds (i.e. I hit return, and the screen is advanced one line) so I know it hasn't frozen... Obviously, I did the full, slow formatting. I don't want to just do the fact superficial format, because obviously something is going on, and ignoring the problem now will just make things more difficult later.

Is there a way to "format" the partition without doing it via the Slackware setup, so I can monitor the progress? Thanks.

If you know there aren't any bad blocks, just perform a quick regular format. But at times it does seem as if its taking forever when you do a slow format. I would let it finish, if its responding then it is most likely still formatting the partition.