We are creating a large backup ext3 partition on 16TB RAID array and the mke2fs took 2.5 hours to complete.
Are there any known tricks we can use to shorten this time?
The aim is to lower the time to get us back on our feet if a disaster strikes and we have to re-create that file system. I see options like lazy_bg and uninit_groups but they seem to be for ext4 file systems, which is not relevant for us yet.
Best Answer
If you don't have a ton of tiny files (and I'm guessing with a 16 TB volume you probably don't), you can reduce the number of inodes, and that will dramatically speed up filesystem creation. The option is
-i (bytes), which takes a number of bytes as a parameter. For each (bytes), an inode will be created. I've had good luck with 4194304 (4 MB).