doing new install, formatting of Win7 drive taking way too long

[AZgl1800]

never ran into this before, it is just a 500gB but a slow spinner.

I chose "Erase whole disk" and let it go....

been almost an hour now, and the cursor is still spinning around....

reluctant to just power down, and maybe destroy the HDD.

FWIW, it is 18.3 Cinnamon

the Screen Saver is showing up at 1 hour, move mouse and back to Install Desktop and spinning cursor.

Am I just being a bit too impatient?
I have installed SSDs in my other stuff.

[trapperjohn]

Hi,

It'll take a while. Don't give up yet.

[AZgl1800]

well,
it never did finish.....
exited via Linux Menu Power Down, and now the USB drive will not show up, so I can't restart the Install again with the USB Flash drive.

So, inserted the DVD install, and the DVD won't run.....
this is a home made PC built up by a guy who passed away 2 years ago....
so, I am disappointed to say the least.

for some odd reason, the BIOS detected that the disk was corrupt, and Win10 Diagnostics took over and rebuilt the PC back to where it was...

yup, it boots up in Win10 again.... and that AFTER the HDD have been erased by linux.... Win10 is tough, gotta tell you.... it refuses to let go.

This is on my friends PC......
his wife's PC is even worse, it is an HP 20-c0223w and Secure Boot is preventing from booting the Linux install with the message "Secure Signature not detected".

I need to turn off Secure Boot on that one but the BIOS is not making that easy.

[trapperjohn]

Yup, depending on the make, the BIOS can be nettlesom.

Also, be sure Windows itself is not constraining the machine to secure boot.

Warn your friend... administering a spouse's computer can be a treacherous task.

[AZgl1800]

I warned him that we were risking the rath of the Devil Gods.....

Google is my friend, I kept searching and discovered that you must install a BIOS password, or the Legacy Enable, UEFI disable options will never appear.

They put up so many RED themed warnings, that you just have to say "oh the heck with it now, it won't boot Windows anymore, there is no turned back.

inserted a BIOS password, and now it boots up like a Linux Mint OS should

Okay, his wife is happy.....
now to see if we can make his PC work..... it is back up in Windows now.
but that is for another day.

my brain is fried for tonight.

[WharfRat]

Try formatting the partition pre-installation from the terminal using mkfs.ext4 -v so you can see what's happening,

If it hangs-up get the pid and sudo strace -p pid should provide further information

[AZgl1800]

Try formatting the partition pre-installation from the terminal using mkfs.ext4 -v so you can see what's happening,

If it hangs-up get the pid and sudo strace -p pid should provide further information

I had already done that but from a LiveSession on the USB Thumb drive, and made two partitions.....
then did a foolish thing, and did not choose "something else"

the final resolution was to remove the 2 extra IDE hard drives....
the main HDD is a USB SATA drive.....

once we did that, and ditched UEFI, and turned on Legacy mode, it came right up as it should, chose 'Something Else' and pointed it to the 1st partition and told it where to find the Swap partition.....

that resolved the problem