Hello,
On Wed, Nov 08, 2023 at 05:19:01PM -0700, Tom Dial wrote:
> On 11/7/23 17:19, gene heskett wrote:
> > What do I do if a gpt partition table has already been made and
> > an ext4 system is already installed? IOW just how "bare" a disk
> > is needed? Is writing a null gpt sufficient?
> You can ignore them, or not, as you like. If you want, you could
> overwrite them with zeros or a pattern of your choice; I would not
> bother.
You do need to be very careful if you have put a GPT label on a
device and then incompletely wiped the device in order to use it for
something else that doesn't involve a GPT label.
The reason for that is, there are several motherboards (EFI
firmwares?) out there that consider a missing GPT label with a
backup GPT present to be an indication that the device is corrupt.
They then helpfully copy the backup GPT back to the start of the
disk, corrupting any data that was there already.
Example:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18541493
"wipefs -a /dev/sda" shold clear the GPT without having to write to
the entire device.
Thanks,
Andy
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