Preparing USB drive

[Graaf_van_Vlaanderen]

On a couple of occasions I installed from a USB-device:
To create the install USB drive I use this command (like noted in the handbook):

dd if=*.img of=/dev/d** bs=10240 conv=sync

This works fine with a 'fresh' USB stick, however when I want to do this a second time over the same USB stick, boot fails.

How can I properly clear the USB stick before issuing the above mentioned command?

 

[multibyte]

How can I properly clear the USB stick before issuing the above mentioned command?

You could "newfs(8)" the usb drive.

 

[J65nko]

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/d** bs=64k

 

[Graaf_van_Vlaanderen]

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/d** bs=64k

I received the following message:

Hjordis# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da2 bs=64k
dd: /dev/da2: Device not configured
25244+0 records in
25243+0 records out
1654325248 bytes transferred in 193.809402 secs (8535836 bytes/sec)

I got a similar message while creating the image that didn't boot in the end. I didn't see this error with the other stick. I still have to try this stick after this erase.

 

[Graaf_van_Vlaanderen]

You could "newfs(8)" the usb drive.

Received this feedback:

Hjordis# newfs /dev/da2
/dev/da2: 1938.0MB (3969024 sectors) block size 16384, fragment size 2048
        using 11 cylinder groups of 183.72MB, 11758 blks, 23552 inodes.
super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at:
 160, 376416, 752672, 1128928, 1505184, 1881440, 2257696, 2633952, 3010208, 3386464, 3762720

 

[Graaf_van_Vlaanderen]

I did both and it seems to work now, since I can boot again the same USB-stick.