Creating datastore on disk > Failed to check for existing file system (clueless)

[Difusio]

So, after two days of browsing and trying all sorts of things I'm finally asking for help as I'm totally clueless.

I've got a WD disk of 2TB, two in fact. Both of them have been used as datastore before without problems. Due to some data-rescue activities I reformatted one of them to EXT4 using fdisk earlier.

Now I can't get it to work as datastore anymore. This is wat my most recent attempts give me:

[root@vSphere:~] vmkfstools -C vmfs5 -b 1m -S Data2 /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD20EZRX2D00DC0B0_________________________WD2DWMC300485016:1

create fs deviceName:'/vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD20EZRX2D00DC0B0_________________________WD2DWMC300485016:1', fsShortName:'vmfs5', fsName:'Data2'

deviceFullPath:/dev/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD20EZRX2D00DC0B0_________________________WD2DWMC300485016:1 deviceFile:t10.ATA_____WDC_WD20EZRX2D00DC0B0_________________________WD2DWMC300485016:1

ATS on device /dev/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD20EZRX2D00DC0B0_________________________WD2DWMC300485016:1: not supported

.

Checking if remote hosts are using this device as a valid file system. This may take a few seconds...

Failed to check for existing file system on device '/vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD20EZRX2D00DC0B0_________________________WD2DWMC300485016:1'.

Usage: vmkfstools -C [vmfs5|vfat] /vmfs/devices/disks/vml... or,

       vmkfstools -C [vmfs5|vfat] /vmfs/devices/disks/naa... or,

       vmkfstools -C [vmfs5|vfat] /vmfs/devices/disks/mpx.vmhbaA:T:L:P

Error: Unable to access device, please check your connection to the device.

The following command takes about 5 minutes to complete:

[root@vSphere:~] partedUtil get /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD20EZRX2D00DC0B0_________________________WD2DWMC300485016

243201 255 63 3907029168

1 2048 3907028991 0 0

Any idea how to fix this?

[cykVM]

Hi,

are there any files on the EXT4 partition, yet?

In general the filesystem of a datastore disk is not EXT4 but VMFS5 for example. So you may need to wipe the disk again or remove remove/wipe the partition table at least and let VMWare partition and format the disk.

[Difusio]

As by a miracle I decided to be stubborn and try the fdisk method despite all the guides saying I shouldn't on ESXI 6.

It worked!