Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Am 2008-04-25 17:08:30, schrieb Bob McGowan: By the definition, if you will, used in the Readme.txt, that the utility writes zeros to the disk, and given that the appropriate dd command can be said to do the same, I'm left wondering as well about just exactly what this tool is doing. It does NOT only write zero's to the Disk but it test the sectors and then auto-remap faulty sectors and after the test, it will write into the NVRAM of the Disk some informations that the Low-Level formated drive looks like a NEWLY bougth drive without any errors (if enough free sectors are found for remaping) Thanks, Greetings and nice Day Michelle Konzack Systemadministrator 24V Electronic Engineer Tamay Dogan Network Debian GNU/Linux Consultant -- Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ # Debian GNU/Linux Consultant # Michelle Konzack Apt. 917 ICQ #328449886 +49/177/935194750, rue de Soultz MSN LinuxMichi +33/6/61925193 67100 Strasbourg/France IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com) signature.pgp Description: Digital signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Hello Douglas and *, Am 2008-04-29 22:35:15, schrieb Douglas A. Tutty: You may wish to consider an industrial-quality compact flash drive. The CF adapter plugs in just like a drive and the I-Q CF cards come with a 5 year warranty and testing by OpenBSD-types (who do a lot of embedded devices using CF cards) shows that for many uses they are very reliable. I am using SanDisk Extereme III and bought recently the Extreme IV. Both in the 4 and 8 GByte variant. I have put my whole OS on it and it seems to be faster then my older PATA drive, which should do arround 52 MByte/sec. /tmp is in tmpfs. /var is put into tmpfs too, but stored on a second CF card (1 GByte SanDisk Ultra IV) to be uncompressed on boot-up and compressed on shutdown. Some directories like /var/cache/apt/archives are excluded and the files from /var/log are not numbered but dated which make it easy to back it up to another medium whithout lossing the sequence. Ok, if you have place on a fileserver or something like this, you can use syslog-ng to log over your network. But realy, CF-Cards are the real solution for silent and cold computers. Oh yes, since my new combinated NFS-, Courier- and PostgreSQL-Server is using fiveteen 300 GByte SCSI-Drives for datas, I have put the OS on a CF-Card too and the whole Server is not in my room... (it is loud like an airport even with special silent cases) Thanks, Greetings and nice Day Michelle Konzack Systemadministrator 24V Electronic Engineer Tamay Dogan Network Debian GNU/Linux Consultant -- Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ # Debian GNU/Linux Consultant # Michelle Konzack Apt. 917 ICQ #328449886 +49/177/935194750, rue de Soultz MSN LinuxMichi +33/6/61925193 67100 Strasbourg/France IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com) signature.pgp Description: Digital signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 10:35 AM, Douglas A. Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 08:41:45PM +0800, paragasu wrote: Or simply because the hard disk it quite old. I buy it second hand because my bios only support 2GB. That hard disk is quite rare nowadays. And if it dies, now might be the right time for the hard disk but not the right time for me though. =p You may wish to consider an industrial-quality compact flash drive. The CF adapter plugs in just like a drive and the I-Q CF cards come with a 5 year warranty and testing by OpenBSD-types (who do a lot of embedded devices using CF cards) shows that for many uses they are very reliable. Doug. can you give a url of the company who sell this?
Re: Fwd: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Am 2008-04-25 01:21:39, schrieb Rafael Fontenelle: Strange. I set a virtual machine with an extra harddisk and I just ran 'cat /dev/null /dev/hdd' as root with /dev/hdd3 umounted in the first attempt and then mounted in the second, but nothing happened with my partition or the whole virtual disk. See the output below: rffdebian01:/# cat /dev/null /dev/hdd rffdebian01:/# cd /mnt/hdd3/ rffdebian01:/mnt/hdd3# ls file rffdebian01:/mnt/hdd3# It seems that /dev/null really returned _nothing_. Very different from 'cat /dev/zero /dev/hdd'. This one really formated the virtual harddisk, cleaning incl. the partition table (I had to remake the partitions with cfdisk). Also displayed a message after completing the harddisk with zeros. rffdebian01:/# umount /dev/hdd3 cat /dev/zero /dev/hdd cat: write error: No space left on device rffdebian01:/# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdd bs=1M Thanks, Greetings and nice Day Michelle Konzack Systemadministrator 24V Electronic Engineer Tamay Dogan Network Debian GNU/Linux Consultant -- Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ # Debian GNU/Linux Consultant # Michelle Konzack Apt. 917 ICQ #328449886 +49/177/935194750, rue de Soultz MSN LinuxMichi +33/6/61925193 67100 Strasbourg/France IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com) signature.pgp Description: Digital signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 04:22:16PM +0800, paragasu wrote: On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 10:35 AM, Douglas A. Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 08:41:45PM +0800, paragasu wrote: Or simply because the hard disk it quite old. I buy it second hand because my bios only support 2GB. That hard disk is quite rare nowadays. And if it dies, now might be the right time for the hard disk but not the right time for me though. =p You may wish to consider an industrial-quality compact flash drive. The CF adapter plugs in just like a drive and the I-Q CF cards come with a 5 year warranty and testing by OpenBSD-types (who do a lot of embedded devices using CF cards) shows that for many uses they are very reliable. can you give a url of the company who sell this? Well, the adapters are made by many vendors, even startech. I haven't used a CF card myself so don't know. Try google for CF and [EMAIL PROTECTED], or try the openbsd website and look for a link to who mirrors the mailing list. Warning: only as a __last__ resort, send a message to misc@ after temporarily subsribing. That group doens't tolerate in a friendly manner people asking who can't show that they looked everywhere else first. You may also want to check the openbsd website's on-line man page and do an apropor for CF or compact flash. Also check the openBSD FAQ. The FAQ and the man pages constitute the vast majority of the documentation and are __very__ detailed. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fwd: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Michelle Konzack wrote: Am 2008-04-25 01:21:39, schrieb Rafael Fontenelle: Strange. I set a virtual machine with an extra harddisk and I just ran 'cat /dev/null /dev/hdd' as root with /dev/hdd3 umounted in the first attempt and then mounted in the second, but nothing happened with my partition or the whole virtual disk. See the output below: rffdebian01:/# cat /dev/null /dev/hdd rffdebian01:/# cd /mnt/hdd3/ rffdebian01:/mnt/hdd3# ls file rffdebian01:/mnt/hdd3# It seems that /dev/null really returned _nothing_. Very different from 'cat /dev/zero /dev/hdd'. This one really formated the virtual harddisk, cleaning incl. the partition table (I had to remake the partitions with cfdisk). Also displayed a message after completing the harddisk with zeros. rffdebian01:/# umount /dev/hdd3 cat /dev/zero /dev/hdd cat: write error: No space left on device rffdebian01:/# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdd bs=1M I don't understand the point you're trying to make, unless it is to just give an alternate way to do the same thing? Yes, the dd command given will also write zeros to the device. Same as the cat /dev/zero /dev/hdd does. And, both commands generate the same basic output error (different words, same issue): cat: write error [No space left on device] dd: writing `/dev/fd0': No space left on device This is because 'cat' only knows to stop when input reaches EOF, which /dev/zero never gives, and dd will only stop if you tell it how many blocks to write, as in: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0 bs=18k count=80 The error messages in the first two cases are simply the response of the disk driver to the fact that it has moved the read/write head to the end of the disk and can't go any farther, even though both commands try to. -- Bob McGowan smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
paragasu wrote: On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 10:35 AM, Douglas A. Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 08:41:45PM +0800, paragasu wrote: Or simply because the hard disk it quite old. I buy it second hand because my bios only support 2GB. That hard disk is quite rare nowadays. And if it dies, now might be the right time for the hard disk but not the right time for me though. =p You may wish to consider an industrial-quality compact flash drive. The CF adapter plugs in just like a drive and the I-Q CF cards come with a 5 year warranty and testing by OpenBSD-types (who do a lot of embedded devices using CF cards) shows that for many uses they are very reliable. Doug. can you give a url of the company who sell this? CF cards are sold everywhere. You want the long-life versions. Finding adapters may be a little harder, but mail-order is probably suitable. The internet is your friend here. This was a good idea, I wish I ahd thought of it. -- Mark Allums -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 06:22:16PM -0500, Mark Allums wrote: CF cards are sold everywhere. You want the long-life versions. Finding adapters may be a little harder, but mail-order is probably suitable. The internet is your friend here. This was a good idea, I wish I ahd thought of it. On the internet, I've seen two kinds of adapters: ones that fit into a standard 3.5 drive space and are designed to treat the CF card as removeable media like a floppy drive, others are designed to fit like a hard drive. One other kind, is designed to plug directly onto the IDE controller on the MB without a cable. Try startech, but also try any industrial or single-board-computer supplier, such as norcotek.com or soekris.com. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 08:41:45PM +0800, paragasu wrote: Or simply because the hard disk it quite old. I buy it second hand because my bios only support 2GB. That hard disk is quite rare nowadays. And if it dies, now might be the right time for the hard disk but not the right time for me though. =p You may wish to consider an industrial-quality compact flash drive. The CF adapter plugs in just like a drive and the I-Q CF cards come with a 5 year warranty and testing by OpenBSD-types (who do a lot of embedded devices using CF cards) shows that for many uses they are very reliable. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fwd: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Hi, Jumping in late, and probably noone still reads this thread, but still, On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 01:21:39AM -0300, Rafael Fontenelle wrote: So, I think that the command 'cat /dev/null /dev/hdd' did nothing to your system. Maybe something else? /dev/hdd is a block device. 'cat whatever /dev/hdd' is an operation on a character device, essentially. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il || a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] || best ICQ# 16849754 || friend -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fwd: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 09:46:04AM +, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: Hi, Jumping in late, and probably noone still reads this thread, but still, On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 01:21:39AM -0300, Rafael Fontenelle wrote: So, I think that the command 'cat /dev/null /dev/hdd' did nothing to your system. Maybe something else? /dev/hdd is a block device. 'cat whatever /dev/hdd' is an operation on a character device, essentially. I do not think character or block device matters. Upon reading /dev/null, EOF will be encounterd. So nothing is written to output. For example try: $ cat /dev/null here $ ls -l here -rw-r--r-- 1 osamu osamu 0 2008-04-27 19:03 here As long as you use correct device, it will write output. /dev/zero or /dev/urandom is the good file to use as such input. $ cat /dev/zero here (Control C pressed) $ ls -l here -rw-r--r-- 1 osamu osamu 105467904 2008-04-27 19:15 here Instead of here, you use /dev/sdax etc. I will not try it now :-) http://people.debian.org/~osamu/pub/getwiki/html/ch02.en.html#specialdevicefiles I usually use dd to erase this kind of device file. The dummy file creation is the same. http://people.debian.org/~osamu/pub/getwiki/html/ch11.en.html#dummyfiles Osamu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Bob McGowan wrote: Mark Allums wrote: Bob McGowan wrote: I have Maxtor IDE drives and Maxtor makes (or made, I got this some time ago) a DOS based utility to do low level formats. Your disk vendor probably has something similar available. The Maxtor utilities will prep a drive, for those who can't be bothered to use the native utilities for an OS, but I quite doubt that an IDE was truly low-level formatted by it. The drive platters of modern drives are low-level formatted before they are even assembled into a working hard disk. They contain embedded servo information, which can't be written by the read/write heads even if one wanted to. Attempting to low-level format an IDE drive would only succeed in permanently destroying the drive. I am not a hardware expert, so I have to admit to using the terms mentioned in the documentation or used by others in some way. This usage may in fact be incorrect, for all I know. However, there are others who speak about low level formatting of Maxtor IDE drives: http://www.ameriwebs.net/groupworks/george/maxtor.htm Beyond this, since Maxtor is now part of Seagate, the setup of the web page is different and a quick search did not bring up anything relating to this. I was not able (yet) to find the original download I did, only the exe file on a floppy. When I find the related docs, I will post that. Sorry, I was being a bit snarky, I guess. Not really called for. There are three kinds of formatting. Low-level, fdisk, and OS-level. Low-level used to need to be done for some reasons, such as to adjust the sector interleave, or to switch the drive to a different physical orientation (required with stepper motor head positioning). It is no longer required to do it more than once, and it is always done at the factory. Fdisk, or partitioning, is not really formatting, but it is something you do in the process of prepping a disk, so it is lumped together with it. OS-level, or high-level, is done to create meta structure, like inodes, or the FAT, etc. It can be done at any time. Many OSes will do a verify of the whole partition. This is an attempt to read every sector. It is not really part of formatting, and can be done at any time. The goal is to find bad sectors, and mark them bad. If there is any other kind of formatting, I am not aware of it. -- Mark Allums -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
So, I think that the command 'cat /dev/null /dev/hdd' did nothing to your system. Maybe something else? i also don't know, it happen after i run that command. There is a lot of error message displayed in the screen. But i am not surprise if it is because of something else - coincident thing happen right?. Or simply because the hard disk it quite old. I buy it second hand because my bios only support 2GB. That hard disk is quite rare nowadays. And if it dies, now might be the right time for the hard disk but not the right time for me though. =p but i think, Bob McGowan give the best explanation for me. I am satisfied with his reasoning, enough for me not to mess up with any simple and innocent look. The issue is not with cat or /dev/null, it's what the shell does when it sees '': open the file, for writing, start at offset 0 (or, truncate the file). But, the system has opened the destination file, in this case a device, and done whatever the device driver is coded to do for this case. Thanks everyone..
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
paragasu wrote: So, I think that the command 'cat /dev/null /dev/hdd' did nothing to your system. Maybe something else? i also don't know, it happen after i run that command. There is a lot of error message displayed in the screen. But i am not surprise if it is because of something else - coincident thing happen right?. Or simply because the hard disk it quite old. I buy it second hand because my bios only support 2GB. That hard disk is quite rare nowadays. And if it dies, now might be the right time for the hard disk but not the right time for me though. =p but i think, Bob McGowan give the best explanation for me. I am satisfied with his reasoning, enough for me not to mess up with any simple and innocent look. The issue is not with cat or /dev/null, it's what the shell does when it sees '': open the file, for writing, start at offset 0 (or, truncate the file). But, the system has opened the destination file, in this case a device, and done whatever the device driver is coded to do for this case. Thanks everyone.. Most manufacturers of hard disks allow for newer models to be used in even fairly old machines. They want to sell as many drives as possible, right? Visit the web sites of the various drive makers, and see whether perhaps someone's lowest end model can be used with your computer. Sometimes, there is a jumper on the drive that you can set to limit the drive geometry (fake it) to something an old BIOS can understand. It may be that your computer can use a 250 GB drive. It will just see only the first 2 GB of the drive. The rest of the capacity will be unused, but it will work. Also, look around you. You may already have a drive you can use this way. And, there might even exist a BIOS mod for your motherboard. I found one for an old machine that was limited to 32 GB, and after flashing the hacked BIOS, was able to use the full capacity of a 120 GB drive. -- Mark Allums -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
paragasu: Or simply because the hard disk it quite old. I buy it second hand because my bios only support 2GB. Linux doesn't care what the BIOS thinks about the hard drive. Have you tried to use larger disks? Chances are that it just works[tm]. J. -- No-one appears to be able to help me. [Agree] [Disagree] http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Jochen Schulz wrote: paragasu: Or simply because the hard disk it quite old. I buy it second hand because my bios only support 2GB. Linux doesn't care what the BIOS thinks about the hard drive. Have you tried to use larger disks? Chances are that it just works[tm]. J. If you do go this way, be sure the boot partition (or, if /boot is part of /, then *all* of the root partition), is contained withing the first 2GB space, so the BIOS can do its thing to boot the system. Once that's done, as noted by Jochen (and others), Linux will boot and will see the full disk. -- Bob McGowan smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Mark Allums wrote: Bob McGowan wrote: Mark Allums wrote: Bob McGowan wrote: I have Maxtor IDE drives and Maxtor makes (or made, I got this some time ago) a DOS based utility to do low level formats. Your disk vendor probably has something similar available. The Maxtor utilities will prep a drive, for those who can't be bothered to use the native utilities for an OS, but I quite doubt that an IDE was truly low-level formatted by it. The drive platters of modern drives are low-level formatted before they are even assembled into a working hard disk. They contain embedded servo --DELETED verbage-- I was not able (yet) to find the original download I did, only the exe file on a floppy. When I find the related docs, I will post that. I found the CD I burned with the utility and readme file last night. Sorry, I was being a bit snarky, I guess. Not really called for. There are three kinds of formatting. Low-level, fdisk, and OS-level. And my apologies, as well. I was not clear in my statement about my knowledge base. I was referring to the issues of low level formatting and IDE devices (and their embedded servos). In any case, see below... Low-level used to need to be done for some reasons, such as to adjust the sector interleave, or to switch the drive to a different physical orientation (required with stepper motor head positioning). It is no longer required to do it more than once, and it is always done at the factory. Fdisk, or partitioning, is not really formatting, but it is something you do in the process of prepping a disk, so it is lumped together with it. OS-level, or high-level, is done to create meta structure, like inodes, or the FAT, etc. It can be done at any time. Many OSes will do a verify of the whole partition. This is an attempt to read every sector. It is not really part of formatting, and can be done at any time. The goal is to find bad sectors, and mark them bad. If there is any other kind of formatting, I am not aware of it. I am not aware of any other kind of formatting, either. So, some excerpts from the Readme.txt file that came with the PowerMax utility I downloaded in November of 2005. Begin quoted text excerpts: Subject: Using Maxtor's Power Diagnostic (POWERMAX.EXE) Utilities (PowerMax v 4.XXX) ... 6.The best test for a drive with intermittent problems is a 'low level' format routine. !! Warning !! This test will erase all your data, but the drive will be restored to a 'factory re-certified' condition. Be sure to make a full backup of all critical data before proceeding. If your computer has more than one hard drive, be sure to choose the correct drive. If a drive fails this test, it usually indicates a drive failure. ... Overview of tests using POWERMAX.EXE: PowerMax is a keyboard menu driven diagnostic. Choices and options are displayed at the bottom of the screen. Further instructions are displayed at the bottom of the popup window display when a test completes. Available Tests: 1. Installation Confirmation 2. Basic Quick (90 Second) Test 3. Advanced Test (Full Scan Test) 4. Burn In Test 5. Low Level Format (Quick) 6. Low Level format (Full) ... Low Level Format, Quick or Full Test: !! Warning!! These tests are data destructive, all user information on the hard drive is removed. Maxtor recommends you backup all critical data and remove other hard drives before performing this test. Perform this test only if all other tests have passed (or by direction of Maxtor Technical Support) but the hard drive is still not performing correctly. The quick option is most useful for removing a computer virus, or you are rebuilding the information on your hard drive, and you need a quick erase of the operating system without taking the time involved to perform a full LLF. The quick LLF overwrites a pattern of zeros to the first 300 megabytes, and the last 100 megabytes of the drive. The full LLF overwrites a pattern of zeros to all sectors on the drive. High capacity hard drives take longer to complete. Allow sufficient time to complete the test. Several hours to overnight may be needed. A full Low Level Format remains the most effective test for a drive with intermittent problems. End quotation section. I was quoting, from memory, this information. I do admit to generalizing it to include other makes of drives, which it appears was an invalid generalization, based on your information. -- Bob McGowan Symantec, Inc. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Bob McGowan wrote: In any case, see below... Low-level used to need to be done for some reasons, such as to adjust the sector interleave, or to switch the drive to a different physical orientation (required with stepper motor head positioning). It is no longer required to do it more than once, and it is always done at the factory. I am not aware of any other kind of formatting, either. So, some excerpts from the Readme.txt file that came with the PowerMax utility I downloaded in November of 2005. I stand corrected. Of course, I was informing everyone of something which I have read multiple times, in various places. I am not a hard drive designer, or other kind of expert of that sort. I believe it to be current fact, but I have no first-hand knowledge of it. Begin quoted text excerpts: Subject: Using Maxtor's Power Diagnostic (POWERMAX.EXE) Utilities (PowerMax v 4.XXX) ... 6.The best test for a drive with intermittent problems is a 'low level' format routine. !! Warning !! This test will erase all your data, but the drive will be restored to a 'factory re-certified' condition. Be sure to make a full backup of all critical data before proceeding. If your computer has more than one hard drive, be sure to choose the correct drive. If a drive fails this test, it usually indicates a drive failure. ... It does say 'low level' format. I recall seeing this before, now that it is brought to my attention. I had a Maxtor drive that failed, and ran the same utility. It was under warranty, and was replaced... Overview of tests using POWERMAX.EXE: PowerMax is a keyboard menu driven diagnostic. Choices and options are displayed at the bottom of the screen. Further instructions are displayed at the bottom of the popup window display when a test completes. Available Tests: 1. Installation Confirmation 2. Basic Quick (90 Second) Test 3. Advanced Test (Full Scan Test) 4. Burn In Test 5. Low Level Format (Quick) 6. Low Level format (Full) ... Low Level Format, Quick or Full Test: !! Warning!! These tests are data destructive, all user information on the hard drive is removed. Maxtor recommends you backup all critical data and remove other hard drives before performing this test. Perform this test only if all other tests have passed (or by direction of Maxtor Technical Support) but the hard drive is still not performing correctly. The quick option is most useful for removing a computer virus, or you are rebuilding the information on your hard drive, and you need a quick erase of the operating system without taking the time involved to perform a full LLF. The quick LLF overwrites a pattern of zeros to the first 300 megabytes, and the last 100 megabytes of the drive. The full LLF overwrites a pattern of zeros to all sectors on the drive. High capacity hard drives take longer to complete. Allow sufficient time to complete the test. Several hours to overnight may be needed. A full Low Level Format remains the most effective test for a drive with intermittent problems. End quotation section. I wonder just what the test is really doing, if all IDE drives since the early '90s are not capable of low level formatting, as I have been led to believe? I was quoting, from memory, this information. I do admit to generalizing it to include other makes of drives, which it appears was an invalid generalization, based on your information. Well, as I said, I do not have first-hand experience with it. I have read many times that low-level formatting is done by special equipment at the factory. I suppose I should do some Googling, and read some more on the subject, to be properly informed. Thanks for reminding me about the Maxtor disk checker utility. -- Mark Allums -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Mark Allums wrote: Bob McGowan wrote: In any case, see below... Low-level used to need to be done for some reasons, such as to adjust ---DELETED stuff--- Well, as I said, I do not have first-hand experience with it. I have read many times that low-level formatting is done by special equipment at the factory. I suppose I should do some Googling, and read some more on the subject, to be properly informed. Thanks for reminding me about the Maxtor disk checker utility. The same goes for me, regarding first hand experience with the internals of a disk drive, etc. I, too, shall have to do some research. By the definition, if you will, used in the Readme.txt, that the utility writes zeros to the disk, and given that the appropriate dd command can be said to do the same, I'm left wondering as well about just exactly what this tool is doing. -- Bob McGowan smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On 24/04/2008, Mark Allums [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I hate to suggest this donning fire-retardant suit but you might borrow a WinXP machine long enough to run the Computer Management disk tool on your Flame on! If all that happened, likely, is that the partition table got trashed, there are ways to recover it with parted and have parted figure out or guess what the partition should be. All it needs is a rough guess of where the partition should begin and end. http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/html_mono/parted.html#SEC24 Give that MSFT junk back to the Dark Lord in his Dark Throne. - Jordi G. H. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Wednesday 23 April 2008 19:52:24 paragasu wrote: What was the output of the p command? Is the problem with the disk or with the partition? The o command creates a new partition table. p will print nothing because i delete all the partition using d command. i never aware of o command because i use n to create new partitions. If your partitition table is bad, n isn't going to fix it no matter how many times you use it. n only creates a partition within the partition table. I'm not sure which version of Linux you're running as p should give useful information whether or not there are any partitions in the table. Let's try another approach. What is the output of fdisk -l? --Mike Bird -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote: On 24/04/2008, Mark Allums [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I hate to suggest this donning fire-retardant suit but you might borrow a WinXP machine long enough to run the Computer Management disk tool on your Flame on! If all that happened, likely, is that the partition table got trashed, there are ways to recover it with parted and have parted figure out or guess what the partition should be. All it needs is a rough guess of where the partition should begin and end. http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/html_mono/parted.html#SEC24 Give that MSFT junk back to the Dark Lord in his Dark Throne. - Jordi G. H. The user in trouble seems to be a newbie. Using parted is not for newbies. My suggestion is just a way to get him started. You might also note that I suggested that there might be other alternatives to this. All he needs is to get the partition table written properly, assuming the drive is not actually toast. MS Computer management disk tool can do this. It calls it initializing the disk Or something like that. Debian can do it too, assuming that the user can sort out the correct command. -- Mark Allums -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On 24/04/2008, Mark Allums [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The user in trouble seems to be a newbie. Using parted is not for newbies. How about gparted, then? It's just a GUI frontend to parted and other tools. I'm not sure if it has the option to use the rescue thing, but since the user in question already seems comfortable typing some commands into fdisk, and parted seems a bit friendlier than fdisk to me, well... - Jordi G. H. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 12:27 AM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 24/04/2008, Mark Allums [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The user in trouble seems to be a newbie. Using parted is not for newbies. How about gparted, then? It's just a GUI frontend to parted and other tools. I'm not sure if it has the option to use the rescue thing, but since the user in question already seems comfortable typing some commands into fdisk, and parted seems a bit friendlier than fdisk to me, well... - Jordi G. H. well, i already been using debian for 3 year by now. I never have any trouble like this one. I don't remember when is the last time i touch m$ windows. I found someone suggest me to use dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M to fix it. i did try that command but it seems doesn't help much either.
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Mark Allums wrote: Bob McGowan wrote: I have Maxtor IDE drives and Maxtor makes (or made, I got this some time ago) a DOS based utility to do low level formats. Your disk vendor probably has something similar available. The Maxtor utilities will prep a drive, for those who can't be bothered to use the native utilities for an OS, but I quite doubt that an IDE was truly low-level formatted by it. The drive platters of modern drives are low-level formatted before they are even assembled into a working hard disk. They contain embedded servo information, which can't be written by the read/write heads even if one wanted to. Attempting to low-level format an IDE drive would only succeed in permanently destroying the drive. I am not a hardware expert, so I have to admit to using the terms mentioned in the documentation or used by others in some way. This usage may in fact be incorrect, for all I know. However, there are others who speak about low level formatting of Maxtor IDE drives: http://www.ameriwebs.net/groupworks/george/maxtor.htm Beyond this, since Maxtor is now part of Seagate, the setup of the web page is different and a quick search did not bring up anything relating to this. I was not able (yet) to find the original download I did, only the exe file on a floppy. When I find the related docs, I will post that. -- Bob McGowan Symantec, Inc. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M to fix it. i did try that command but it seems doesn't help much either. Could this command have the same result as 'cat /dcev/null /dev/sdb' ? actually, i read some post from http://howto.wikia.com/wiki/Howto_wipe_a_hard_drive_clean_in_Linux and some post from linuxforums about this
Fwd: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
-- Forwarded message -- From: Rafael Fontenelle [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 25/04/2008 01:19 Subject: Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 ! To: paragasu [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2008/4/24, paragasu [EMAIL PROTECTED]: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M to fix it. i did try that command but it seems doesn't help much either. Could this command have the same result as 'cat /dcev/null /dev/sdb' ? actually, i read some post from http://howto.wikia.com/wiki/Howto_wipe_a_hard_drive_clean_in_Linux and some post from linuxforums about this Strange. I set a virtual machine with an extra harddisk and I just ran 'cat /dev/null /dev/hdd' as root with /dev/hdd3 umounted in the first attempt and then mounted in the second, but nothing happened with my partition or the whole virtual disk. See the output below: rffdebian01:/# cat /dev/null /dev/hdd rffdebian01:/# cd /mnt/hdd3/ rffdebian01:/mnt/hdd3# ls file rffdebian01:/mnt/hdd3# It seems that /dev/null really returned _nothing_. Very different from 'cat /dev/zero /dev/hdd'. This one really formated the virtual harddisk, cleaning incl. the partition table (I had to remake the partitions with cfdisk). Also displayed a message after completing the harddisk with zeros. rffdebian01:/# umount /dev/hdd3 cat /dev/zero /dev/hdd cat: write error: No space left on device rffdebian01:/# Note: when I ran this with /dev/hdd3 mounted, I got a lot of error messages and the system didn't want to umount not either reboot. Pretty messy. So, I think that the command 'cat /dev/null /dev/hdd' did nothing to your system. Maybe something else? Cheers, Rafael
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote: On 24/04/2008, Mark Allums [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The user in trouble seems to be a newbie. Using parted is not for newbies. How about gparted, then? It's just a GUI frontend to parted and other tools. I'm not sure if it has the option to use the rescue thing, but since the user in question already seems comfortable typing some commands into fdisk, and parted seems a bit friendlier than fdisk to me, well... - Jordi G. H. Sorry, I was thinking about something else. Parted is okay for fairly naive users. I don't know what I was thinking, but it was something else. You are correct. Still, shouldn't knock something that works. -- Mark Allums -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Tuesday 22 April 2008 16:33:28 paragasu wrote: Your installer should normally handle disk partitioning and partition formatting, but if you want to do it by hand you'll need mke2fs (or similar) after creating the partitition table and then some partitions in fdisk. i am happy if i could just that. i did fdisk about 10 times for now. everytime i do it. the same error scrolling across my screen after i hit the write command in fdisk. You're going to have to provide some specifics. What drive on what controller? What are the drive's capacity specs (C/H/S)? What command did you use to start fdisk? What commands did you issue within fdisk? In particular, did you create a new partition table? --Mike Bird -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
You're going to have to provide some specifics. What drive on what controller? What are the drive's capacity specs (C/H/S)? What command did you use to start fdisk? What commands did you issue within fdisk? In particular, did you create a new partition table? --Mike Bird this is what printed on the old hard disk Seagate ST32122A 4092 CTL 2111MB 16 HEADS 63 SECTORS #fdisk /dev/sdb inside the fdisk, i did use the command p, n, t, d,a i did delete the whole partition, create new partition and reboot the computer. the same thing happen. same error message appear.
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 1:46 AM, Patrick Ouellette [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 01:38:58AM +0800, paragasu wrote: this is what printed on the old hard disk Seagate ST32122A 4092 CTL 2111MB 16 HEADS 63 SECTORS #fdisk /dev/sdb inside the fdisk, i did use the command p, n, t, d,a i did delete the whole partition, create new partition and reboot the computer. the same thing happen. same error message appear. Did you remember to w (write changes to disk) and exit in fdisk? -- Patrick Ouellette [EMAIL PROTECTED] ne4po (at) arrl (dot) net Amateur Radio: NE4PO Crank the amp to 11, this needs more cowbell - and a llama wouldn't hurt either Your arguments are an odd mix of overly optimistic on one side and overly pessimistic on the other i did use the w command to apply all changes to the disk.
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 01:38:58AM +0800, paragasu wrote: this is what printed on the old hard disk Seagate ST32122A 4092 CTL 2111MB 16 HEADS 63 SECTORS #fdisk /dev/sdb inside the fdisk, i did use the command p, n, t, d,a i did delete the whole partition, create new partition and reboot the computer. the same thing happen. same error message appear. Did you remember to w (write changes to disk) and exit in fdisk? -- Patrick Ouellette [EMAIL PROTECTED] ne4po (at) arrl (dot) net Amateur Radio: NE4PO Crank the amp to 11, this needs more cowbell - and a llama wouldn't hurt either Your arguments are an odd mix of overly optimistic on one side and overly pessimistic on the other -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
inside the fdisk, i did use the command p, n, t, d,a i did delete the whole partition, create new partition and reboot the computer. the same thing happen. same error message appear. What was the output of the p command? Is the problem with the disk or with the partition? The o command creates a new partition table. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
What was the output of the p command? Is the problem with the disk or with the partition? The o command creates a new partition table. p will print nothing because i delete all the partition using d command. i never aware of o command because i use n to create new partitions.
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
paragasu wrote: What was the output of the p command? Is the problem with the disk or with the partition? The o command creates a new partition table. p will print nothing because i delete all the partition using d command. i never aware of o command because i use n to create new partitions. I hate to suggest this donning fire-retardant suit but you might borrow a WinXP machine long enough to run the Computer Management disk tool on your disk. It can often make a disk work that was munged by something. It is not a very good or comprehensive tool, and I would only recommend trying it if you are desperate. Similar comments can be made about other tools. Still, go to the disk manufacturer's website and look for a tool to use. If the disk is 250 GB or smaller, a DOS-based tool may work. (320 GB and up don't respond to int13 commands, so it takes a non-DOS tool for larger drives). You can burn a bootable CD and run the tool. I'm sure that if it an be fixed at all, it can be fixed in Debian. However, you may be getting tired of fighting it. Consider it a learning experience. -- Mark Allums -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 1:20 PM, Mark Allums [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: paragasu wrote: What was the output of the p command? Is the problem with the disk or with the partition? The o command creates a new partition table. p will print nothing because i delete all the partition using d command. i never aware of o command because i use n to create new partitions. I hate to suggest this donning fire-retardant suit but you might borrow a WinXP machine long enough to run the Computer Management disk tool on your disk. It can often make a disk work that was munged by something. It is not a very good or comprehensive tool, and I would only recommend trying it if you are desperate. Similar comments can be made about other tools. Still, go to the disk manufacturer's website and look for a tool to use. If the disk is 250 GB or smaller, a DOS-based tool may work. (320 GB and up don't respond to int13 commands, so it takes a non-DOS tool for larger drives). You can burn a bootable CD and run the tool. I'm sure that if it an be fixed at all, it can be fixed in Debian. However, you may be getting tired of fighting it. Consider it a learning experience. -- Mark Allums thank you for the suggestion.
/dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
well, i just did an experiments on my old pentum III computer. one of the slave hardisk listed as /dev/sdb1 (EXT2) and /dev/sdb2(SWAP) i run the command /dev/null /dev/sdb1 and suddently, i cannot cannot read or mount my /dev/sdb1 anymore even after i restart my computer few times. i have message saying media failure or disk I/O error. now i am wondering. whether it is because the command i just executed or my hard disk is really dying?
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
paragasu wrote: well, i just did an experiments on my old pentum III computer. one of the slave hardisk listed as /dev/sdb1 (EXT2) and /dev/sdb2(SWAP) i run the command /dev/null /dev/sdb1 and suddently, i cannot cannot read or mount my /dev/sdb1 anymore even after i restart my computer few times. i have message saying media failure or disk I/O error. now i am wondering. whether it is because the command i just executed or my hard disk is really dying? Is this a serious question? George. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 10:35 AM, paragasu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: well, i just did an experiments on my old pentum III computer. one of the slave hardisk listed as /dev/sdb1 (EXT2) and /dev/sdb2(SWAP) i run the command /dev/null /dev/sdb1 and suddently, i cannot cannot read or mount my /dev/sdb1 anymore even after i restart my computer few times. i have message saying media failure or disk I/O error. What exactly did you run? /dev/null is not executable, so you cannot run it and redirect the output somewhere else. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Is this a serious question? George. well, i am sorry if this question look so stupid. but yes, i mean it. but i don't mind if you laugh or think it is a joke anyway
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:35:31 +0800 paragasu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: now i am wondering. whether it is because the command i just executed or my hard disk is really dying? It could be either. The command you typed effectively formatted the disk. /dev/null contains no data. It is the Linux equivalent of a black hole. If you send the output of /dev/null to a file (which is exactly what you have done) with a single chevron (), it will overwrite anything that exists in that file (in this case the entire contents of your disk). If you use a double chevron () you will append the contents of /dev/null to the end of the file (in this case, your disk). All I can say is I hope you took a backup... Kind regards, Matt -- |Matthew Macdonald-Wallace |Tiger Computing Ltd |The Linux Specialists | |Tel: 0330 088 1511 |Web: http://www.tiger-computing.co.uk | |Registered in England. Company number: 3389961 |Registered address: Wyastone Business Park, | Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, NP25 3SR -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 10:35 AM, paragasu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: well, i just did an experiments on my old pentum III computer. one of the slave hardisk listed as /dev/sdb1 (EXT2) and /dev/sdb2(SWAP) i run the command /dev/null /dev/sdb1 and suddently, i cannot cannot read or mount my /dev/sdb1 anymore even after i restart my computer few times. i have message saying media failure or disk I/O error. What exactly did you run? /dev/null is not executable, so you cannot run it and redirect the output somewhere else. The problem is that the file is opened before the commands are executed. Try: thiscommanddoesnotexist /tmp/test ls -lha /tmp/test Perhaps an EOF was written? N.- -- http://arhuaco.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
It could be either. The command you typed effectively formatted the disk. /dev/null contains no data. It is the Linux equivalent of a black hole. If you send the output of /dev/null to a file (which is exactly what you have done) with a single chevron (), it will overwrite anything that exists in that file (in this case the entire contents of your disk). If you use a double chevron () you will append the contents of /dev/null to the end of the file (in this case, your disk). All I can say is I hope you took a backup... Kind regards, Matt well, is that so simple to format the hardisk? format is ok as long as it doesn't render my hard disk useless.
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
thiscommanddoesnotexist /tmp/test ls -lha /tmp/test Perhaps an EOF was written opps.. a correction. what i did was $cat /dev/null /dev/sdb1 i forgot to include the cat command :(
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
paragasu wrote: well, i am sorry if this question look so stupid. but yes, i mean it. but i don't mind if you laugh or think it is a joke anyway Sorry but I assumed that if you knew about /dev/null and the use of that you would also expect to break something if you redirected stuff directly to the disk device. So I thought you were having a boring day at work and decided to crack a joke. ;-) George. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
paragasu wrote: opps.. a correction. what i did was $cat /dev/null /dev/sdb1 i forgot to include the cat command :( I think that would also result in an EOF being written to the target file. George. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 10:49 AM, paragasu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: thiscommanddoesnotexist /tmp/test ls -lha /tmp/test Perhaps an EOF was written opps.. a correction. what i did was $cat /dev/null /dev/sdb1 i forgot to include the cat command :( Then you zeroed the disk. As others said, hope you have a backup. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On 2008-04-22 15:45 +0200, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote: On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:35:31 +0800 paragasu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: now i am wondering. whether it is because the command i just executed or my hard disk is really dying? It could be either. The command you typed effectively formatted the disk. I don't think so. /dev/null contains no data. It is the Linux equivalent of a black hole. If you send the output of /dev/null to a file (which is exactly what you have done) with a single chevron (), it will overwrite anything that exists in that file (in this case the entire contents of your disk). Only true for an ordinary file and because it's the shell that truncates the file before the redirection. Since you cannot read anything from /dev/null, catting it to device files is harmless. It's a different story with /dev/zero instead of /dev/null ... If you use a double chevron () you will append the contents of /dev/null to the end of the file (in this case, your disk). But because you append nothing, that's actually a no-op. Sven -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On 2008-04-22 16:05 +0200, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote: On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 10:49 AM, paragasu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: thiscommanddoesnotexist /tmp/test ls -lha /tmp/test Perhaps an EOF was written opps.. a correction. what i did was $cat /dev/null /dev/sdb1 i forgot to include the cat command :( Then you zeroed the disk. As others said, hope you have a backup. No, you would only zero out the disk if you cat /dev/zero to it. Catting /dev/null immediately returns and does nothing. Sven -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On 22/04/2008, Sven Joachim [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, you would only zero out the disk if you cat /dev/zero to it. Catting /dev/null immediately returns and does nothing. Hm at least catting /dev/null to a full file makes the file now be 0 bytes long. I'm not going to test what it does to my hard drive, of course. ;-) - Jordi G. H. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote: On 22/04/2008, Sven Joachim [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, you would only zero out the disk if you cat /dev/zero to it. Catting /dev/null immediately returns and does nothing. Hm at least catting /dev/null to a full file makes the file now be 0 bytes long. I'm not going to test what it does to my hard drive, of course. ;-) - Jordi G. H. The issue is not with cat or /dev/null, it's what the shell does when it sees '': open the file, for writing, start at offset 0 (or, truncate the file). The null device is defined as something that, when read, will immediately return an EOF condition, so nothing is read. So, with a cat of the null device, nothing read, nothing written. But, the system has opened the destination file, in this case a device, and done whatever the device driver is coded to do for this case. I expect, to be able to get the disk back into a usable state, you will need to find a low level formatting tool and rebuild it from scratch. I have Maxtor IDE drives and Maxtor makes (or made, I got this some time ago) a DOS based utility to do low level formats. Your disk vendor probably has something similar available. -- Bob McGowan smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Hm at least catting /dev/null to a full file makes the file now be 0 bytes long. I'm not going to test what it does to my hard drive, of course. ;-) i don't know what technical explanation behind this but i just found out, my hard disk die after i run this command. the hard disk cannot be recognized by udev (i am using sysresccd) and the hard disk produce error media error, IO error, and many cryptic character i don't really like to see.
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Tuesday 22 April 2008 09:32:38 paragasu wrote: i don't know what technical explanation behind this but i just found out, my hard disk die after i run this command. the hard disk cannot be recognized by udev (i am using sysresccd) and the hard disk produce error media error, IO error, and many cryptic character i don't really like to see. Hard disks don't produce characters, cryptic or otherwise. What command did you run that produced cryptic characters from your hard disk? First you said you did /dev/null /dev/sdb1. Then you said that you did $cat /dev/null /dev/sdb1. Unless you've seriously messed with permissions or made yourself a member of the disk group then neither of these would have any effect. You want to tell us now that you did #cat /dev/null /dev/sdb1? You want to tell us why? You want to tell us what state your drive was in before you did this? You want to tell us why what /dev/sda is and what /dev/sdb is and the content of your /etc/fstab? --Mike Bird -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On 2008-04-22 18:13 +0200, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote: On 22/04/2008, Sven Joachim [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, you would only zero out the disk if you cat /dev/zero to it. Catting /dev/null immediately returns and does nothing. Hm at least catting /dev/null to a full file makes the file now be 0 bytes long. That's because the shell opens the file with the O_TRUNC flag. If you try the same with a device file, nothing happens because O_TRUNC is ignored then. See open(2). I'm not going to test what it does to my hard drive, of course. ;-) If you still have a floppy drive, you can test with that, this is what I did. Sven -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Tuesday 22 April 2008 10:17:08 paragasu wrote: After browsing through that hard disk. i know there is nothing i want there and i want to format it. And trying to experiment with command (i did mention it) i type %cat /dev/null /dev/sdb1 (all local hard disk shown as /sda*, sdb* in my system) and suddenly any read write to the disk produce error. if you want to see how the error look like i did attach the photos of the screen i took just few minutes ago. So you ran cat /dev/null /dev/sdb1 as root and you think that may have something to do with the errors you're now seeing on /dev/sda2? Since you've written that there's no information you need on those hard drives, I suggest you start seriously testing all your hard drives and determine exactly where the hardware problem is before trying to install an O/S. If you're absolutely certain that there's no data on the drives then you can use fdisk on each drive and create a new partition table, just in case insane partitition parameters are causing the errors. Your installer should normally handle disk partitioning and partition formatting, but if you want to do it by hand you'll need mke2fs (or similar) after creating the partitition table and then some partitions in fdisk. If you're having difficulty with Puppy Linux you might want to ask the Puppy Linux people as Puppy Linux is not Debian based. IIRC it's a unique distro with a slightly Slack flavor. This is a Debian list. Good luck, --Mike Bird -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Your installer should normally handle disk partitioning and partition formatting, but if you want to do it by hand you'll need mke2fs (or similar) after creating the partitition table and then some partitions in fdisk. i am happy if i could just that. i did fdisk about 10 times for now. everytime i do it. the same error scrolling across my screen after i hit the write command in fdisk.
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 02:45:11PM +0100, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote: On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:35:31 +0800 paragasu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: now i am wondering. whether it is because the command i just executed or my hard disk is really dying? It could be either. The command you typed effectively formatted the disk. Minor correction... Any command which directly writes to a disk's device file and writes something other than a valid file system effectively de-formats[1] the disk. Re-formatting provides a usable (if empty) filesystem. De-formatting provides an unusable disk, at least until it is re-formatted. [1] I would say unformat, but that term has been widely used to mean something other than cause the disk to no longer be formatted. -- News aggregation meets world domination. Can you see the fnews? http://seethefnews.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /dev/null /dev/sdb1 !
Bob McGowan wrote: I have Maxtor IDE drives and Maxtor makes (or made, I got this some time ago) a DOS based utility to do low level formats. Your disk vendor probably has something similar available. The Maxtor utilities will prep a drive, for those who can't be bothered to use the native utilities for an OS, but I quite doubt that an IDE was truly low-level formatted by it. The drive platters of modern drives are low-level formatted before they are even assembled into a working hard disk. They contain embedded servo information, which can't be written by the read/write heads even if one wanted to. Attempting to low-level format an IDE drive would only succeed in permanently destroying the drive. -- Mark Allums -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
