Wiping internal disk for use in your mede8er
USER LEVEL: Experienced
When a disk has been used in another device and you have placed it in your Mede8er (Or you want to bring your mede8er back to the default situation when you bought it to start from scratch installing it)::
- be sure all old partitions are removed
- format it after that with the mede8er (from mede8er setup menu)
This to be sure that you don't get trouble if some old partitions are left behind form other operating system.
Wiping of old partitions can be done by attaching your mede8er by the supplied usb cable to your PC.
And then removing any partitions that you see on the disk with windows diskmanager (BE CAREFULL TO SELECT THE CORRECT DISK)
A fast method to start this is just opening a dos box and type diskmgmt.msc and press the return button.
An other way is to do it from a telnet connection to your mede8er.
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BE CAREFULL, YOU ARE GOING TO WIPE ALL THE DATA ON YOUR MEDE8ER DISK WHEN YOU FOLLOW UP INSTRUCTIONS BELOW
BE SURE TO FIRST BACKUP YOUR DATA ON THE DISK IF DESIRED.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* First be sure that your mede8er can be reached from your PC over the network.
* Be sure that telnet works from out of a dos box (use Google to find how to enable this in Windows if it is not working)
* Be sure not to have any other usb disk or flash disk is connected to your mede8er (to prevent wiping the wrong disk)
* Unplug power of your mede8er, and plug in again after some 20 secs. Wait until it is fully up.
Now telnet into your mede8er.
telnet <ip-address of mede8er> (use as login name: root and leave password blank)
type fdisk -l
You will see anything like below (depending on what was before on the disk)
/ # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2 60741 487894050 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 60742 60761 160650 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda3 60762 60781 160650 83 Linux
Now type dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1024 count=1024
And after that type sync
So like this:
/ # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1024 count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
/ # sync
Now fdisk -l will show that your disk is empty.
/ # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk /dev/sda doesn't contain a valid partition table
/ #
BE SURE TO UNPLUG POWER NOW AND REPLUG AFTER 10 SECS AND START MEDE8ER AGAIN.
Now format your disk with the format command on your mede8er.
After format is finished it will reboot.
Your disk is now clean formatted with Mede8er partition structure on it and ready to use.
Edit:
Noticed that sometimes with firmware rev. 2.0.1 the format entry in the format menu is greyed out, so you are not able to format it from the menu. To work around this, download firmware version 1.2.2.a, format your disk with this version and then upgrade to version 2.0.1 or higher again.
BE SURE TO FOLLOW UP THE EMERGENCY UPGRADE PROCEDURE EXACTLY AS DESCRIBED IN THE RELEASE NOTES THAT GO WITH IT