From: "Thomas Schmitt" <[email protected]> Date: Thu, 14 May 2026 10:01:05 +0200 > A CD/DVD/BD burner, a USB stick, a hard disk ?
HDD connected by USB. > How much storage capacity does it offer ? Nominally 500 GB; significantly larger than other drives in the system. Rebooted since composing the orginal message. Currently the drive is sdf. Image from Gparted here. https://easthope.ca/LaCieGparted.jpg > The emerging ISO would occupy 2258784 "CD data sectors" of 2048 bytes > each (4412 MiB)) whereas the medium offers only 951368 * 2048 bytes > of remaining capacity (1868 MiB). > This is quite surely not the drive which only offers 1868 MiB of free > space. > That drive was "blank" or "appendable", or else xorriso should not > have reached the point where it complains about the lack of space. > > /dev/sdd is probably a USB stick or a hard disk. This kind of drive > is considered by xorriso as holding an overwritable medium. > So this statement from man xorriso applies: > > Closed is the state of DVD-ROM media and of multi-session media which > were written with command -close on. [...] > Overwritable media assume this state [...] if they contain > unrecognizable data in the first 32 data blocks. > > Obviously your /dev/sdd contains non-zero data in these 64 KiB, but > these data do not indicate the presence of an ISO 9660 filesystem. > Considering such a "medium" as closed is a safety precaution against > destroying data without knowing what they might mean. > > Yes. After being very very sure (*) that /dev/sdd is the right drive > address, do > > xorriso -outdev stdio:/dev/sdd -blank as_needed > > xorriso will then write 64 KiB of zeros to the beginning of the drive, > which invalidates a possible partition table and might invalidate > a possible other filesystem which is currently on /dev/sdd. I contemplate Gparted deleting the FAT part. Any disadvantage there? A twin of this drive was deployed more than a year ago. Don't remember how I initialized it. =8~/ > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > (*) > Excluding any other drive from being overwritten is of course crucial. > > With USB sticks i use such opportunities to test xorriso-dd-target > with its plug-in identification of USB drives: > > xorriso-dd-target -with_sudo -plug_test > > This run will ask you to first have the drive unplugged, press Enter, > then plug in the drive, and press Enter again. > The result will be something like > sdd : YES : usb+ has_vfat+ : INTENSO USB > or > sdd : NO : usb+ ... has_ext2- : INTENSO USB > > The evaluation "YES" or "NO" is not decisive in this case, because you > want to overwrite the device in any case. > Decisive is the device address "sdd", which belongs to the drive that > was plugged in during the xorriso-dd-target run. Thanks. =8~) The Gparted graphical presentation also may help me avoid blunders. Thx, ... P. -- mobile: +1 778 951 5147 VoIP: +1 778 508 0020 Bcc: peter at e a s t h o p e dot c a projects: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:PeterEasthope
