Date: Sat, 2 May 2015 23:38:54 +0200 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: "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: <20150502233854.c80bc5ae.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <5544DBA2.1030102@hiwaay.net> References: <5543FAA3.7050907@hiwaay.net> <441tiz3wrx.fsf@lowell-desk.lan> <5544DBA2.1030102@hiwaay.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
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. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20150502233854.c80bc5ae.freebsd>