[SPARCbook] "Error writing VTOC"

[Hugo.van.der.Kooij at caiw.nl]

On Sat, 30 Sep 2000, Keith Howick wrote:

> I think I've done something wrong. After performing the "dd" command I
> noticed the driver manufacturer and partition information had been
> overwritten with the source drive's information. I thought about it, and
> decided to re-format the disk and try again. However, the format command
> posts an error,
> 
> "warning: error writing VTOC
> Note: a PC-format label cannot be overwritten
> Note: if this disk contains a PC label it must
> Note be removed before being labelled with format

You need to whipe the disk (at least the first bit). Do something like:
dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/??? bs=1024 count=100

And retry the solaris format command.

Something similar is what I needed to do before I could use a PC SCSI disk
in SUN. (And not like what I needed to do to use an AS/400 SCSI disk in
a PC where I had to reformat the drive with another blocksize (512 vs 522 
if I recall it correctly.)

Hugo.

-- 
Hugo van der Kooij; Oranje Nassaustraat 16; 3155 VJ  Maasland
hvdkooij at caiw.nl	http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~hvdkooij/
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