After fixing the accidentially overwritten usb key I managed to format the external hdd with vfat, reiserfs and then tried ext4, which failed in the same manner. The last output I have tells me it's writing the inode tables:
Schreibe Inode-Tabellen: 655/3727 -- creating ext2/3 fs on cryptsetup/luks usb hdd partition hangs system https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/379508 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
