I have lots of other files, yes, several gigabytes worth. I have a satellite dish connection, which for uploading has all the speed of a telephone line. It's a production server. And I don't have my hands on the console. I think I'll avoid fdisk, but thanks anyway ;) Drew
----- Original Message ---- From: Jerry McAllister <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Drew Jenkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sent: Friday, March 16, 2007 11:17:55 AM Subject: Re: Corrupted OS On Fri, Mar 16, 2007 at 05:09:15PM +0700, Drew Jenkins wrote: > 23Hi; > Is it possible to rebuild an OS without reformatting the hard drive? I > have FBSD6.2, so I can't upgrade. I am not sure just what you are trying to avoid. First of all, strictly speaking, when installing FreeBSD you never format or reformat the hard-drive. That is a much lower level operation. FreeBSD and all other OSen use the factory format unless you do something unusually drastic. Doing fdisk/bsdlabel/newfs is not technically 'formatting' the drive but rather building slices, partitions and filesystems on the drive. Now. You do not have to redo the fdisk, bsdlabel and newfs to wipe out and reinstall things, but why not do them? They take very little time. The only reason I could think of would be if you have a lot of your own files you don't want to nuke. But, in that case, the better course of action would be to back them up somewhere safe and do the complete reinstall from scratch and then bring your own files back. ////jerry > TIA, > Drew > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Expecting? Get great news right away with email Auto-Check. Try the Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/newmail_tools.html _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"