[SPARCbook] "Error writing VTOC"

[Keith Howick]

Woo-Hoo!

As it turns out the dd command wasn't doing anything. using "if=/dev/null"
caused no blocks to be read or written. On a whim I attempted,

dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s6 of=/dev/rdsk/c0t2d0s0 bs=1024 count=100

which wrote the 100 blocks and suddenly format knows the external HD is a
seagate again!

Thanks!

-Keith


Hugo.van.der.Kooij at caiw.nl wrote:

> 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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