[wplug] Gparted destroyed my new WD Passport

[Scott F. Kiesling]

Tried it, didn't work. Unplugged and tried again. Definition
of insanity I know, but then:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda
dd: writing to `/dev/sda': No space left on device
512409+0 records in
512408+0 records out
262352896 bytes (262 MB) copied, 3.78296 s, 69.4 MB/s

Great (but is the '262 Mb cause for concern?), so on to fdisk:


miles temp # fdisk /dev/sda
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor
Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory
only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the
previous
content won't be recoverable.

You must set cylinders.
You can do this from the extra functions menu.
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be
corrected by w(rite)


so I print the partition table in expert:


Disk /dev/sda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 0 cylinders

Nr AF  Hd Sec  Cyl  Hd Sec  Cyl     Start      Size ID
 1 00   0   0    0   0   0    0          0          0 00
 2 00   0   0    0   0   0    0          0          0 00
 3 00   0   0    0   0   0    0          0          0 00
 4 00   0   0    0   0   0    0          0          0 00

Expert command (m for help): 
    

Now, any idea what to enter for cylinders? I've searched the
WD site for the info but could find nothing.

Thanks
Scott


On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 11:00:49AM -0500, scoob8000 wrote:
> From: scoob8000 <scoob8000 at gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:00:49 -0500
> To: General user list <wplug at wplug.org>
> Subject: Re: [wplug] Gparted destroyed my new WD Passport
> 
> That's odd.  I've used gparted to resize a few winders partitions.  Unless
> the drive mis-reported it's cylinders or something maybe..
> 
> Maybe try wiping it clean (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda) and recreate the
> partition..
> 
> -Mike
> 
> On 3/1/07, Scott F. Kiesling <kiesling at pitt.edu> wrote:
> >
> >Hi all-
> >
> >Just got this new 60Gb external HD (very sexy-small, sleek
> >black).
> >
> >I thought I would try out gparted, I usually use fdisk.
> >
> >It comes with a big FAT32 partition. I had gparted shrink it
> >to about 10G. This did not work, and now I cannot get the
> >partition tools to work. They see the hard drive, but I get
> >this error (yes I am root):
> >
> >miles# cfdisk /dev/sda
> >
> >(BLANK TERMINAL SCREEN)
> >
> >FATAL ERROR: Cannot read disk drive
> >Press any key to exit cfdisk
> >
> >I'd appreciate any ideas for tools for getting this thing
> >back. I'm not worried out data, since there wasn't any (I
> >didn't need the windows sync and google search that was
> >pre-installed).
> >
> >Oh, I was able to mount the disk before I ran gparted (yes I
> >unmounted).
> >
> >Thanks-
> >Scott
> >
> >