Unable to GPT format the disk

[Nemock]

Don't worry, the main volume looks a lot cleaner :)

 

[Spearfoot]

Another thing to try is the '-f' (force) option in umount, like this: umount -f /dev/ad0

If that doesn't work... you could download the Ultimate Boot CD, burn it to a bootable CD or USB stick, boot it, and use one of the HDD utilities to zap the drives.

 

[Nemock]

Another thing to try is the '-f' (force) option in umount, like this: umount -f /dev/ad0

If that doesn't work... you could download the Ultimate Boot CD, burn it to a bootable CD or USB stick, boot it, and use one of the HDD utilities to zap the drives.

Yea, that's an option. I'll likely just pull the drives, because doing that is likely to involve as much effort lugging out the keyboard and monitor to boot into that usb stick etc etc.

Grrr... Damn partitions....

 

[Spearfoot]

More digging here on the forums leads to this thread, where a poster had exactly the same problem as you and was able to 'dd' his drives by executing this command before the dd or gpart commands: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=0x10.

 

[Nemock]

sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=0x10.

His name was Bingo.

Allowed the dd commands to run. After which allowed me to create the Volume.

You're a saint Spearfoot, a saint.

Now that we're here, any opinions on how I should setup the DVR portion of this volume as it's intended for? The usage was meant as a temp storage / DVR volume, but I'm considering splitting it in two to give a dedicated amount only to the DVR functionality. Any opinions on yay/nah for that?

 

[Spearfoot]

Well, then! See how easy that was! :p

Yes, you can reserve space and set quotas for a dataset/volume either at creation time or later with the edit function, all from the Storage selection on the main menu.

 

[wblock]

I was trying to avoid quoting that sysctl, because it allows Very Bad Things to happen. It should only be used in extreme situations, yet people use it routinely. It's basically a safety to keep from overwriting important things. Needing it means the drive was somehow mounted by something. I suspect it was Intel RAID metadata in use, but don't know.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

The drives in question used to be part of a RAID10 on said desktop

When reusing drives, why not just badblocks -svw? This wipes the drives and revalidates them at the same time.

 

[Nemock]

When reusing drives, why not just badblocks -svw? This wipes the drives and revalidates them at the same time.

Because I was not aware that it would be an issue, and am also not heavily versed in this subject, so didn't know that command existed.

 

[Nemock]

I was trying to avoid quoting that sysctl, because it allows Very Bad Things to happen. It should only be used in extreme situations, yet people using it routinely. It's basically a safety to keep from overwriting important things. Needing it means the drive was somehow mounted by something. I suspect it was Intel RAID metadata in use, but don't know.

Possible, but I also destroyed that Intel Raid with a prior command, and it still wasn't working, so Iunno. Shrug.

 

[Spearfoot]

When reusing drives, why not just badblocks -svw? This wipes the drives and revalidates them at the same time.

Funny, I mentioned badblocks in my very first post, but got distracted...

 

[Nemock]

Funny, I mentioned badblocks in my very first post, but got distracted...

Yea I'll have to remember that for the future if it ever comes down to that.

 

[Spearfoot]

Yea I'll have to remember that for the future if it ever comes down to that.

Yeah, well - I dropped the ball at the very beginning! You are installing 'used' drives in your system, so I should have advised you of the need to burn them in to insure they're usable. Many of us here use the badblocks program for this purpose; it reads and writes every sector on a disk, which helps reveal any defects. Details here:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-hard-drive-burn-in-testing.21451/

 

[Terry Pounds]

More digging here on the forums leads to this thread, where a poster had exactly the same problem as you and was able to 'dd' his drives by executing this command before the dd or gpart commands: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=0x10.

Halalooyaaaa....... This worked for me too.... Thank you so much!

 

[Green750one]

I know this is an old post, but I just use the HBA card config utilities to format new drives. Takes a good few hours but simple. Assuming you're using an HBA card that is...!