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Date:      Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:49:39 -0500 (EST)
From:      Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu>
To:        shih@math.jussieu.fr
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: formating a disk
Message-ID:  <200603311949.k2VJndFB010969@clunix.cl.msu.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20060331194219.GB27567@math.jussieu.fr>

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> 
>  Le 31/03/2006 à 06:34:16+0200, Albert Shih a écrit
> >  Le 30/03/2006  20:19:17-0500, Jerry McAllister a écrit
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > I wonder what exactly you mean by 'format'.
> > > We don't tend to use that word to mean making slices (fdisk), 
> > > partitions (disklabel/bsdlabel) or file systems (newfs).
> > > 
> > > Usually format refers to something done at the very low leval of
> > > the drive and is normally only done at the manufacturer nowdays.
> > > I expect you mean one or more of the others, but cannot say.
> > > 
> > > But, anyway, that is what you need to do - in that order.  
> > >   fdisk,  disk/abel/bsdlabel,  newfs
> > > 
> > > So, try and explain what you have done using these utilities if
> > > you have and if you haven't, then check them out and see if
> > > that helps.   If you really did a "format" under XP, then I think
> > > you can just start over with fdisk, but I haven't tried that on
> > > a hard disk much less a firewire device.
> > 
> > First I try to edit the slice with fdisk but when he need to write I've 
> > got
> > 
> > Information from DOS bootblock is:
> > 1: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
> >     start 63, size 156296322 (76316 Meg), flag 80 (active)
> >         beg: cyl 1/ head 1/ sector 1;
> >         end: cyl 512/ head 254/ sector 63
> > 2: <UNUSED>
> > 3: <UNUSED>
> > 4: <UNUSED>
> > Should we write new partition table? [n] y
> > fdisk: Geom not found
> > [root@freebsd1 rc.d]#
> > 
> > What's that mean ?
> > How can I fix that ?
> > 
> I answer to myself
> 
> After
> 
> 	dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1k count=100
> 
> it's ... not working but after
> 
> 	dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1k count=100000
> 
> everything work fine.

Ah, yes.   You got hit by that one.  I have a couple of times and almost
mentioned it, but was unsure of how you were using the terminology so I
didn't want to add any more to the issue just then.

I don't know just why that happens sometimes -- someone else might 
be able to explain.  Some fragment of left over data must confuse 
things.  But using the dd as you mention above does seem to fix it 
and that step is indicated in the bsdlabel man page, although not 
in a very enlightening manner.

So, good luck,

////jerry

> 
> Thanks.
> 
> --
> Albert SHIH
> Universite de Paris 7 (Denis DIDEROT)
> U.F.R. de Mathematiques.
> 7 ième étage, plateau D, bureau 10
> Heure local/Local time:
> Fri Mar 31 21:41:04 CEST 2006
> 




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