Recover (clean) Freenas USB Drive

[Flag815]

I have tried the suggested solution to a Freenas4Noobs tread posted on Feb 1 2013 by FigNewton entitled "Formatting a USB drive to wipe away a previously installed FreeNAS" but I have not had any success. I have not found any way to clean the read-only partition on an old Freenas usb drive. (The drive does not have a write protect switch.) What follows is a copy of my shell output:

[root@freenas /var/log]# camcontrol devlist

<HL-DT-ST CDRW/DVD GCC4482 E114> at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (cd0,pass0)
<WDC WD20EFRX-68AX9N0 80.00A80> at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (ada0,pass1)
<WDC WD20EFRX-68EUZN0 80.00A80> at scbus2 target 0 lun 0 (ada1,pass2)
<ST3000DM001-1CH166 CC24> at scbus3 target 0 lun 0 (ada2,pass3)
<Generic Flash Disk 8.07> at scbus7 target 0 lun 0 (pass4,da0)
< Patriot Memory PMAP> at scbus8 target 0 lun 0 (pass5,da1)

[root@freenas /var/log]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da1 bs=1M
dd: /dev/da1:
Input/output error 1+0
records in 0+0 records out
0 bytes transferred in 0.004943 secs (0 bytes/sec)

The Patriot Memory drive (/dev/da1) is the drive I am trying to clean. System log identifies
the error as a "write protection" issue. Any help will be appreciated.

PS I am currently running Freenas-9.2.1.3-BETA-e3f3e20-x64

 

[gpsguy]

You can try: mount -uw /

As warri said, I don't know if this will work from FreeNAS.

 

[Flag815]

Well, it took me a while to realize how clever your solution was. But once I did, it worked. The "mount -uw /" command removes read-only protection from the root directory. So, the key is to boot from the usb drive that you want to clean. Then execute the "mount -uw /" command, then shutdown. The usb drive can now be formatted or re-partitioned. Thanks.

 

[diedrichg]

Thank you! I will be needing this soon! I need to start fresh, just too many little odd quirks going on with improper previous setups and such.

 

[cyberjock]

Well, it took me a while to realize how clever your solution was. But once I did, it worked. The "mount -uw /" command removes read-only protection from the root directory. So, the key is to boot from the usb drive that you want to clean. Then execute the "mount -uw /" command, then shutdown. The usb drive can now be formatted or re-partitioned. Thanks.

Yeah.. that does nothing. The mounting isn't handled like this. If it "fixed" your problem you're not really recognizing how mounting works. In windows there is no distinction of read-only and write-able. The actual mount in read-only or writable is solely based on how the operating system that is running on the system mounts the drive. In FreeNAS it mounts it read-only on bootup. There is no "flag" for the file system to mount it read-only everywhere. Windows can't read UFS anyway, so it has no ability to even recognize a file system enough to understand this hypothetical read-only flag you think exists.

 

[Flag815]

Couple of comments on cyberjock's comment:
1. Have you read rule #6 on posting in a forum?
2. No one said anything about Windows in this post except cyberjock.
3. Gpsguy's solution did work as I stated.