Hello forum,

Upgrading fc10 to fc12 with a fresh install. Made several partitions with fdisk. mkfs failed. "Bad superblock at block 1. Need blocks 1 to 4 to create file system. Aborting."

Tried mkfs -c, badblocks, dumpe2fs, no joy. No backup superblocks, because I had already fdisked.

Repartitioned starting at cyl 10. mkfs worked fine then. FC12 installer still could not initialise disk, however. I guess it looks at block 1, to initialise before it offers diskdruid, so it never gets to see my custom partition layout.

How can I force the installer to accept my custom partition layout?
Is a bad superblock at block 1 a fatal, throw-the-disk-away fault?

Thanks in advance

Bad superblocks indicate that the disk could be on its way out. I would suggest getting a new harddrive.

One option would be to install FC13 to another harddrive, and then to copy it to the badsuperblock HD while adjusting GRUB to account for the badsuperblock HD.

To do this, you would need to edit the new /etc/fstab and the grub/menu.lst to recognize the badsuperblock HD. Also update the initrd.

The better option is to get a new harddrive and install FC13.