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Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 14:06:16 +0100
From: Siegbert Baude <siegbert.baude@gmx.de>
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To: Frederick Bowes <fred@k1x.org>
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Subject: Re: Hard drive geometry headache (slightly off topic)
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Frederick Bowes wrote:
> I've solved the problem and repreat it here for future generations reference
> (: It appears that the MBR was infact corrupt, causing fdisk to get
> confused...
> the following command made the hd appear blank and let it all work again:
> 
>   dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 count=2000
> 
> (Yes i lost my data but the drive now works!) Thanks for ur help (:

It would be more precise to use

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=512 count=1

as this will delete exactly the first block of the first IDE-disk, aka 
MBR. If your MBR is corrupt, but you still care for the data, you have 
better chances to recover this way.

Ciao
Siegbert