Date: Sun, 3 May 2015 10:03:15 -0600 (MDT) From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> To: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> Cc: "William A. Mahaffey III" <wam@hiwaay.net>, FreeBSD Questions !!!! <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: How to restore a USB drive converted to bootable Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.20.1505031002120.84742@wonkity.com> 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 Sat, 2 May 2015, 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. It is easier to use gpart, and it will correctly remove whichever partitioning metadata is present: gpart destroy -F <device>
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