Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2002 17:50:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Peter Leftwich <Hostmaster@Video2Video.Com> To: robert Backhaus <robbakfreebsd@yahoo.co.uk> Cc: Cherie & John Carri <cjcarri@earthlink.net>, FreeBSD LIST <FreeBSD-Questions@FreeBSD.Org> Subject: Re: Can FreeBSD make a hard drive unbootable by other OS's ? Message-ID: <20020802174436.L90860-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net> In-Reply-To: <20020731013439.8264.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com>
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On Tue, 30 Jul 2002, robert Backhaus wrote: > Now we've got 40GB disks for the price of a good day's work, those tracks are rather unimportant. I still would use DD mode if I didn't want to dual boot, knowing that any strange formatting can be zapped away fairly easily. > > You can do this for example with `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rsd0 count=15`" > What this will do is, for the purposes of any fsidk/partition magic/formatter program, return the disk to a 'Unformatted, straight from the factory' state. From there, do what you want! It's the `fix all problems' shotgun solution. He he, coooool `man zero` -- this didn't appear until FreeBSD 4.4?! > > Question 3, is this fdisk /mbr a DOS command or a FreeBSD command, or both? > Dos command. It's the dos disk partitioner. Great for this, but it's too slow for most PC installers, who use things from Ontrack that format a disk in about 5 seconds. Whoa 5 seconds! What is this "Ontrack" thing to which you refer? > > Ooh ooh ooh! What is ZapDisk? Is it like PartitionMagic for FreeBSDers?! > It's a dos utility that does the 'partition table obliteration' outlined above. Put it on a boot floppy and add it to your tooklit. Do a google, I couldn't find it's hompage. It'll be at tucows et al I recently found out that the bootable PartitionMagic diskettes are not stand alone disks. That is, in order to boot, they corroborate or verify something as being install on a DOS partition :( Is ZapDisk useful for recovery or repair operations, or only for obliteration? I ask because I have taken out my old 40gb drive due to having run a command (`boot0cfg -B /dev/ad0s2`) which wiped my MBR *and* partition table (I think / I am told)... Needed: Some kind of bootable tool or method to mount the old drive and have a utility guess-timate or figure out logically where it appears the old partition lines were drawn... there are "4 slices" on that HD, data I need! -- Peter Leftwich President & Founder Video2Video Services Box 13692, La Jolla, CA, 92039 USA +1-413-403-9555 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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