X-Recipient: archive-cygwin AT delorie DOT com X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-3.2 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,KHOP_THREADED X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Message-ID: <50EC3D77.5080804@mailme.ath.cx> Date: Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:38:31 +0100 From: bartels User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:10.0.11) Gecko/20121123 Icedove/10.0.11 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com CC: Warren Young Subject: Re: disk format question References: <50EC265F DOT 2010507 AT mailme DOT ath DOT cx> <50EC37EA DOT 8000308 AT etr-usa DOT com> In-Reply-To: <50EC37EA.8000308@etr-usa.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com On 01/08/2013 04:14 PM, Warren Young wrote: > On 1/8/2013 06:59, bartels wrote: >> >> The windows format.com > > format.com hasn't existed since the DOS days. That includes the DOS-based versions of Windows, up through Windows ME. Under NT-derived > versions of Windows, "format" is a built-in command in cmd.exe. That may very well be true, but I have a friend called locate: $ locate format.com /cygdrive/c/Windows/System32/format.com /cygdrive/c/Windows/SysWOW64/format.com /cygdrive/c/Windows/winsxs/amd64_microsoft-windows-format_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_827dd459a3aa9980/format.com /cygdrive/c/Windows/winsxs/x86_microsoft-windows-format_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_265f38d5eb4d284a/format.com And it even seems to work ;-) > > > claims the fs is write protected, but I hope dd >> can help out. > > It's worth a try, but if I had to take a blind bet on it, I'd say you're going to find that dd will give the same result. Cygwin is > essentially a user-level process. If cmd.exe cannot do a thing, dd.exe probably can't, either. > > It is *possible* that unmounting the filesystem with the taskbar button will let you write to the raw device. But Windows being Windows, it's > possible that will make it disappear from the system entirely, too. I cannot touch the gui. It may not be necessary, as format.com has a /x feature. > >> The mtab is not very helpful: > > That's because Cygwin proper does not mount local filesystems. The Cygwin mount table just shows you Cygwin-specific mappings that it has > added on top of what the underlying NT kernel has done. Okay, I see. >> My question is this: which device in /dev do I use? > > According to [this][1] it's probably /dev/sdb. But please do read through what I pointed you to first, and check its applicability carefully > before attempting this. 'Probably' is not good enough when the goal is targeted destruction :) I need a solid automated procedure to locate my device. $ cat /proc/partitions major minor #blocks name 8 0 732574584 sda 8 1 104391 sda1 8 2 245063542 sda2 8 16 976762584 sdb 8 17 102400 sdb1 8 18 976657408 sdb2 8 32 4882808320 sdc 8 33 131072 sdc1 8 34 4882675712 sdc2 8 48 3909092 sdd 8 49 3909091 sdd1 8 64 7566844 sde 8 65 7566016 sde1 8 80 31590400 sdf 8 81 31590400 sdf1 $ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on C:/cygwin/bin 932G 62G 871G 7% /usr/bin C:/cygwin/lib 932G 62G 871G 7% /usr/lib C:/cygwin 932G 62G 871G 7% / C: 932G 62G 871G 7% /cygdrive/c D: 31G 31G 0 100% /cygdrive/d E: 102M 30M 73M 30% /cygdrive/e F: 234G 137G 98G 59% /cygdrive/f K: 3.8G 616M 3.2G 17% /cygdrive/k O: 4.6T 1.7T 3.0T 36% /cygdrive/o X: 3.1G 3.1G 0 100% /cygdrive/x Y: 4.6T 1.7T 3.0T 36% /cygdrive/y Z: 7.3G 46M 7.2G 1% /cygdrive/z > > [1] http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-specialnames.html#pathnames-posixdevices Yeah, I had a look see on that page before and it is not all that helpful, for reasons you explained. Does windows leave a trail when mounting? Prospects are not good without it. Thanks for the help. - bartels -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple