Busted my harddrive using dd :-)

johnnybhoy67 · 02-28-2006, 07:49 AM

OK I've done a very silly thing.......I've used the command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda conv=notrunc

and I can't get my HDD working any more :-)

I'm using a knoppix boot disk which I was using to play arounds with imaging etc. but I needed to wipe teh disk and I thought this command would be a good idea lol

Help please???

Cheers

John

oneandoneis2 · 02-28-2006, 08:30 AM

You erased the partition table - the disk no longer knows what partitions it has, or how they're formatted, or other such vital information.

fdisk or cfdisk should be able to reformat it.

kilgoretrout · 02-28-2006, 08:36 AM

In knoppix, as root run:

# fdisk -l

You will probably be told sda has no valid partition table which it doesn't since you zeroed it out. As stated above, you need to partition and format the drive. IIRC knoppix includes Qtparted, a Partition Magic clone, which you can use to easily do that task.

johnnybhoy67 · 02-28-2006, 08:43 AM

When using:

QTPArted I get a message "critical error during ped_disk_new!"

fdisk sda I get "unable to open sda"

cfdisk sda "Fatal error cannot open disk drive"

Any pointers?

Cheers

J

johnnybhoy67 · 02-28-2006, 08:45 AM

hi Guys,

Forget my last post.

I right clicked and selected "make a new partition table" and this has fixed it!

Many Thanks

John

p.s. how could I do this in command line using either fdisk or cfdisk?

kilgoretrout · 02-28-2006, 09:37 AM

Here's a nice little cfdisk HowTo to get you started:

http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/...TO/cfdisk.html

johnnybhoy67 · 02-28-2006, 02:28 PM

Hi Guys,

I was being stoopid again.

cfdisk /dev/sda
fdisk /dev/sda

does the trick.

I do know these programs pretty well I was just being a dumbass.

J