Larry Price wrote:
> This is kind of a borderline question; > > A disk was intentionally zero'd out using > > dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda > > however the DOS fdisk utility couldn't rebuild the partition table > afterwards. > > Is it possible that the rather radical data-ectomy performed > might have damaged the low-level formatting of the disk?
Very unlikely. I've repartitioned disks that way many times using Linux's fdisk. Depending on the exact solar angles of incidence and scattering on the lunar surface, you might need to reboot Linux after the dd operation to flush the old partition table out of the kernel.
I've never done this using DOS, but you might need to reboot there, too.
I suggest KNOPPIX. (-:
Also, there is some malware* called EZdrive that takes the first sector of the disk, installs its own driver there, and moves the user-visible partition table somewhere else on the disk. If you don't know it's there, it can mess with you.
Check out Chapter 8 of the Large Disk Howto.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-8.html
* It's "legitimate malware". People pay for it and install it intentionally, and it allegedly does something useful. But it's a pain for Linux users.
-- Bob Miller K<bob> kbobsoft software consulting http://kbobsoft.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
I've used that command (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda) when starting from scratch, and the hard drives are just fine. Bob's suggestion of using DOS's fdisk /mbr should work to rebuild the partition table. Also, Linux's fdisk will do this. It automatically detects a missing partition table and builds a new one. Just remember to (w)rite the partition table before exiting the program. And then reboot, for the reason Bob mentioned.
Jason Dommasch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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