Invalid fdisk partition table found (fwd)

[Warren Block]

On Thu, 24 Nov 2011, Robert wrote:

> [robert at dell64] ~> sudo gpart destroy -F da1
> da1 destroyed
>
> [robert at dell64] ~> fdisk /dev/da1
> ******* Working on device /dev/da1 *******
> parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
> cylinders=29 heads=64 sectors/track=32 (2048 blks/cyl)
>
> parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
> cylinders=29 heads=64 sectors/track=32 (2048 blks/cyl)
>
> fdisk: invalid fdisk partition table found

The partition table was cleared.

> Media sector size is 512
> Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
> Information from DOS bootblock is:
> The data for partition 1 is:
> sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
>    start 32, size 59360 (28 Meg), flag 80 (active)
> 	beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
> 	end: cyl 28/ head 63/ sector 32

And it starts with a default table equal to the size of the drive.

> I see the flashing lights like it is writing to the CF card but nothing
> changes.
>
> More suggestions welcome. These are quite expensive CF cards.

The dd/fdisk and gpart results show the same problem, so it likely isn't 
in the partitioning.

Do both cards report the same size?

I found recently that there is some oddness with certain Sandisk flash 
memory that made it non-responsive to anything.  FreeBSD couldn't do a 
thing with it.  Before throwing it away, I tried it on a Windows Vista 
system... which recognized and formatted it without a complaint.  Now it 
works on everything.  Special vendor-specific code in Windows?

Another option would be to attempt formatting the cards with a camera.