Invalid fdisk partition table found (fwd)

[Robert]

On Thu, 24 Nov 2011 13:45:37 -0700 (MST)
Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> wrote:

> 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.

Is it supposed to still show sysid 165 ?

I was under the impression that dd if=/dev/zero would clean out
everything including sector 1.

> 
> > 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?

Yes..sort of 28, 29 MB

> 
> 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?

XP Pro shows and error that the disk cannot be formatted. I tried it in
the wifes Windows 7 and it shows no drive attached.

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

I'll have to ask the camera owner if she tried that.

OT. The last 2 times that I have sent replies to two list regarding this
question, I have not seen it come through to me. Julian's relies as
well as yours come through.

Robert