From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jul 22 16:14:11 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 22AE71065670 for ; Sun, 22 Jul 2012 16:14:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Received: from mx01.qsc.de (mx01.qsc.de [213.148.129.14]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CF05B8FC08 for ; Sun, 22 Jul 2012 16:14:10 +0000 (UTC) Received: from r56.edvax.de (port-92-195-22-218.dynamic.qsc.de [92.195.22.218]) by mx01.qsc.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8D04D3CDCB; Sun, 22 Jul 2012 18:14:03 +0200 (CEST) Received: from r56.edvax.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by r56.edvax.de (8.14.5/8.14.5) with SMTP id q6MGE2bc002741; Sun, 22 Jul 2012 18:14:02 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2012 18:14:02 +0200 From: Polytropon To: Bruce Cran Message-Id: <20120722181402.9fec82f0.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <500C1788.8000505@cran.org.uk> References: <201207221038.q6MAc8kW022215@mail.r-bonomi.com> <500C0B21.3020001@cran.org.uk> <500C1788.8000505@cran.org.uk> Organization: EDVAX X-Mailer: Sylpheed 3.1.1 (GTK+ 2.24.5; i386-portbld-freebsd8.2) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Wojciech Puchar , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, Robert Bonomi Subject: Re: fsck on FAT32 filesystem? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Polytropon List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2012 16:14:11 -0000 On Sun, 22 Jul 2012 16:08:56 +0100, Bruce Cran wrote: > On 22/07/2012 16:01, Wojciech Puchar wrote: > >> 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M' works under Cygwin - or you can > >> just write a load of zeros to \\.\PhysicalDrive0 . > > > > who prevents you to bood live CD or pendrive with FreeBSD (or > > openbsd,netbsd,linux,solaris,whatever usable)? > > Nobody - I didn't say users couldn't boot from a FreeBSD/etc live CD, > but zeroing the disk in Cygwin is an alternative. Installing Cygwin on a "Windows" PC is nothing an average user could achieve easily. The _idea_ of booting something else is also no typical approach. That's why professional companies offer a paid service so the user does not have to invest his valuable time in educating himself about alternatives what he cannot do _natively_ with his "Windows". It's a simple market decision which seems to work (or they wouldn't care to offer it). Furthermore, in your example using Cygnwin's dd _on_ the disk Cygnwin is currently running from, and the "Windows" it runs on too, doesn't seem like a very good idea. I assume it will result in a bluescreen soon and a _partially_ erased disk. By the way, I remember I had a DD.EXE program on my old DOS system. I'm not sure if such a tool could operate on devices (instead of filesystem-based representations as "drive letters"), but it actually _was_ a DOS-based "copy & convert" utility for the PC. :-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...