diff --git a/src/driver/index.js b/src/driver/index.js
index f0fe630..bb2c95e 100644
--- a/src/driver/index.js
+++ b/src/driver/index.js
@@ -1501,6 +1501,13 @@ class CsiBaseDriver {
                     case "ext3":
                     case "ext4":
                     case "ext4dev":
+                      /**
+                       * Skip the automatic block‐discard (TRIM) phase so mkfs doesn’t
+                       * wait on the storage backend to zero/free every block. On many
+                       * iSCSI or thin‐provisioned volumes the discard step can stall
+                       * mkfs for minutes—`-E nodiscard` makes the format finish immediately.
+                       */
+                      formatOptions.unshift("-E", "nodiscard");
                       // disable reserved blocks in this scenario
                       formatOptions.unshift("-m", "0");
                       break;