Formating a root drive in digital unix.

[Abdullatif M abdulla]

Dear all,

I wanted to format a 36GB (OSF1 V4.0 APLHA)drive used as root disk, It has three partitions and i tried my best to follow the documentation to format it using the disklabel command. I am not able to wibe out this drive.
Can any one help me with a step by step instructions on how to clean this disk. I am booting now from CD.

This is un urgent task please help.

[Venkatesh BL]

What command did you try for this? May be you can just 'dd' zeros to wipe out the disk contents.

[Abdullatif M abdulla]

I used (diklabel) command.I didnt use dd

[Bondarenko Alexander]

I hope system run on other drive, than you try to wipe.
What's about disklabel -z ?

[Abdullatif M abdulla]

Its done . I just used the newfs command.

[Venkatesh BL]

'newfs' is to create ufs filesystem. It doesn't neccessarily wipeout the old contents from the disk. It is just not visible to naked eyes anymore.

If you wanted to 'wipeout' stuff, you could use 'dd' command and fill the drive contents with 0's.

[Kapil Jha]

you will have to use dd command to wipe the data.
with disklabel you would alter the label but still data would be there.

why exactly you want to wipe out the data.

BR,
Kapil+

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

If you do really want to wipe the disk, then the zeero command is probably easiest.

Boot from CD, and drop to a Unix shell.
Create the relevant device files:

# cd /dev
# ./MAKEDEV rz0
# /usr/lbin/zeero -d -f /dev/rrz0c

This assumes of course that the drive you want to clean is rz0.

Cheers,

Rob

[Nick Bishop (Kiwi)]

Recommended you disconnect any other disk from the system that has valuable data, while you do this.

It can be a bit confusing, the devices might change names when you boot from CD.

You do want to wipe THE WHOLE DISK?

The /usr/lbin/zeero command certainly works, and as far as I can see (Tru64 5.1B-4) doesn't require a disklabel (which I suspect the "dd" command might sqark if there's no disklabel).

And once it's finished, the disklabel will be gone (zeroed out, like the rest of the disk).

ps. It's polite to give error messages if you do get errors (yes, write it down and type it into this forum, word-for-word). And it's also polite to assign points (I'd say Rob should get the lions share here).

Nick.

[Abdullatif M abdulla]

Hi , Nick

I dont know what is the un polite thing I did, seeing you using the word polite.Can I know why u used this word "polite" and what you mean behind it?