From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Mar 13 22: 6:31 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail8.nc.rr.com (fe8.southeast.rr.com [24.93.67.55]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9D0D137B402 for ; Wed, 13 Mar 2002 22:06:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from i8k.babbleon.org ([66.57.85.154]) by mail8.nc.rr.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.5.1877.687.68); Thu, 14 Mar 2002 01:06:24 -0500 Received: by i8k.babbleon.org (Postfix, from userid 111) id ACDBBBA05; Thu, 14 Mar 2002 01:06:18 -0500 (EST) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" From: Brian T.Schellenberger To: Scott Voegtlin , questions@FreeBSD.ORG, Cliff Sarginson Subject: Re: Reformt to a FAT Paritition Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 01:06:18 -0500 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.3] References: <20020313151226.4572.qmail@web13007.mail.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <20020313151226.4572.qmail@web13007.mail.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-Id: <20020314060618.ACDBBBA05@i8k.babbleon.org> Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG The best approach I've found for this sort of thing is to just zero out the partitions and/or the entire disk, depending on what you want to recover. Then start the install for the new O/S you want to install. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0c /* entire disk */ or dd if=/dev/zero of=?dev/ad0cs2 /* one partition */ You could give a block count, but I usually don't, I just count to 10 and then ^C it. it's really only the first block or two that you need to zero out. Once you do that, the install of whatever O/S you like will see the disk and/or partition as unallocated and be happy to allocate it for you. Scott-- If you've already blown away FreeBSD, and you have the disks, then use the disk 2 (the rescue disk) to zero it; if not, you'll have to re-install FreeBSD long enough to take itself off. PS to Scott: Why would you change it over to FAT32? The NT file system is vastly superior; in some respects it's actually better than the FreeBSD file system, as it's a journaling filesystem and thus doesn't need to "scan & repair" after a bad shutdown. It's just criminal to install NT on FAT32, IMHO. Not that that has anything to do with FreeBSD. On Wednesday 13 March 2002 10:12 am, Scott Voegtlin wrote: | Howdy | | I'm sorry to be a pain in the ass, but I'm absolutely desperate.. I've been | reading through the manual and the "stuff" that came along with the OS, but | I've stuck. I've decided that the machine I was originally going to operate | a BsD server on is no longer adequet for my purposes.. so I was told to | uninstall BsD on it, and format the drive back to a FAT32, and put Windows | NT (I know, I know.. what a pain) back on it. | | I've installed BsD on this machine, however, I can't seem to get it off... | How do I format the drive back to a FAT32? | | Thanks for your time | | Scott | | | | --------------------------------- | Do You Yahoo!? | Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email! -- Brian T. Schellenberger . . . . . . . bts@wnt.sas.com (work) Brian, the man from Babble-On . . . . bts@babbleon.org (personal) ME --> http://www.babbleon.org http://www.eff.org <-- GOOD GUYS --> http://www.programming-freedom.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message