aws ec2 : mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/xvdf

the problem: attempting to mount an amazon EBS volume to an EC2 linux machine results in the following:

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/xvdf,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

this can happen if you did not format your volume… try these instructions
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-using-volumes.html

for your convenience, it is also described here:

Caution: This procedure assumes you want to mount an empty volume. If you’re mounting a volume that already has data on it (e.g., a public dataset), don’t use mkfs before mounting the volume. Otherwise you’ll format the volume and delete the existing data.

Enter the following commands

yes | mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdh
mkdir /mnt/data-store
mount /dev/sdh /mnt/data-store