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From: Nikos Vassiliadis <nvass@teledomenet.gr>
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2007 13:17:20 +0200
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Cc: Thomas Vogt <thomas@bsdunix.ch>
Subject: Re: bcwipe doesn't wipe any block device
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On Wednesday 14 March 2007 16:44, Thomas Vogt wrote:
> Hello
> 
> Has someone ever tried to wipe a block device on freebsd 6.2 with
> bcwipe?
> 
> I tried
> bcwipe -bvmd /dev/aacd1
> 
> I get:
> Writing to /dev/aacd1: Invalid argument
> I tried slices too but it i got the same error.
> 
> dd can overwrite my disk several times but perhaps someone can give me a
> hint how to wipe a disk with bcwipe.

It must be the way it access the device, that
causes the problem.

I suggest trying the following:
1) Create a filesystem covering the whole disk,
2) Fill up the disk creating a file the size of
   the filesystem on it.
3) have bcwipe operate on the file instead of
   the raw device. I assume it does this.

I am not familiar with bcwipe...

Nikos