Date: Sat, 02 May 2015 17:23:13 -0453 From: "William A. Mahaffey III" <wam@hiwaay.net> Cc: "FreeBSD Questions !!!!" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: How to restore a USB drive converted to bootable Message-ID: <55454CDA.3020209@hiwaay.net> In-Reply-To: <20150502233854.c80bc5ae.freebsd@edvax.de> References: <5543FAA3.7050907@hiwaay.net> <441tiz3wrx.fsf@lowell-desk.lan> <5544DBA2.1030102@hiwaay.net> <20150502233854.c80bc5ae.freebsd@edvax.de>
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On 05/02/15 16:45, Polytropon wrote:
> On Sat, 02 May 2015 09:20:09 -0453, William A. Mahaffey III wrote:
>> On 05/02/15 09:06, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
>>> "William A. Mahaffey III" <wam@hiwaay.net> writes:
>>>
>>>> I am about to do some OS installs (NetBSD & OpenBSD, as it happens) on
>>>> boxen under construction. I would also like to use UBCD on a flash
>>>> drive to memcheck those boxen prior to installation. If I prep a USB
>>>> thumb drive as either a bootable UBCD drive or an over-the-WWW
>>>> installer, I wipe out the drive for its original use. Is there a way
>>>> to restore the drive back to its original functionality if I wanted to
>>> Is "wipe the drive and reformat" what you need to hear, or do you have
>>> more requirements that you haven't made clear?
>>>
>>
>> Wipe & reformat, preferably from CLI under FBSD 9.3R-p13 for
>> convenience, is what I'm after. Clearly creating a bootable UBCD or
>> installer will wipe out whatever was
>> there before, so I just want to get back to 'virgin' USB drive.
> In that case, the command
>
> # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1m count=1
>
> should be fine. If there is any offending GPT metadata located
> at the end of the USB drive, estimate the size and also erase
> the last few MBs (use skip= to do so). There is no need to
> actually zero out the _whole_ drive.
*Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh*, I wasn't sure about that (zero the whole drive),
thanks :-) ....
--
William A. Mahaffey III
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"The M1 Garand is without doubt the finest implement of war
ever devised by man."
-- Gen. George S. Patton Jr.
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