added post on ext4 drivce partition creation

posts/new-drive-setup-with-ext4-in-linux.md

@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+---
+layout: doc
+date: 2024-06-27
+title: setting up a fresh hdd with ext4 in linux
+description: a public note to myself on how to set up a new hard drive with ext4 in linux
+tags:
+  - linux
+  - ext4
+  - nas
+  - storage
+---
+
+<Title/>
+
+## Background
+
+Fresh ext4 partitions have 2 issues: 
+- 5% reserved space for root that is not needed on large drives: 5% of a 20TB is 1TB wasted.
+- days or weeks of waiting for the drive to complete the `ext4lazyinit` process, which is a waste of electricity and time.
+
+Here's the steps to set up and mount a new hard drive with ext4 in linux:
+
+```shell
+# 1. find the drive you want to format:
+lsblk -o NAME,MOUNTPOINT,SIZE,MODEL | grep -E '^\w+' | grep -v '/$' | grep -v '^loop'
+# look for the drive that has no mountpoint and the size and name you expect
+
+# 2. Create the partition, replace /dev/sdX with the correct drive
+sudo mkfs.ext4 -m 0 -E lazy_itable_init=0,lazy_journal_init=0 /dev/sdX
+
+# 3. Create a mount point
+sudo mkdir /media/YOURMOUNTPOINTNAME
+
+# 4. find the UUID of the drive, copy the UUID of the drive you just formatted (e.g. sdX)
+ls -lha /dev/disk/by-uuid
+
+# 5. Add the drive to /etc/fstab
+sudo nano /etc/fstab
+# add the following line to the end of the file:
+/dev/disk/by-uuid/UUID /media/YOURMOUNTPOINTNAME ext4 defaults,nofail 0 2
+
+# 6. Mount the drive
+sudo mount -a
+```
+
+That's it! You now have a fresh ext4 partition with no wasted space and no waiting for the `ext4lazyinit` process to complete. Enjoy.
+
+
+If you missed to force the `lazy_itable_init=0,lazy_journal_init=0` options during the `mkfs.ext4` command, you can still force the lazy init process to complete by running the following commands:
+
+```shell
+# 1. unmount the drive
+sudo umount /dev/sdXXX
+
+# 2. force the lazy init process to complete
+sudo mount -o init_itable=0 /dev/sdXXX /media/YOURMOUNTPOINTNAME
+```
+
+The command might take a couple of minutes to complete, but it will finish the lazy init process immediately. Then your drive will behave as expected. [via](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1379965/how-to-get-a-newly-created-ext4-filesystem-to-finish-writing-the-index-node-imme)
+
+I've probably stumbled across [this post](https://fedetft.wordpress.com/2022/01/23/on-ext4-and-forcing-the-completion-of-lazy-initialization/) 20 times so I include it here for reference.
+
+<Comment />