Re: What is the proper way to remove an xfs partition?

Eric Sandeen
2017-08-31T21:09:06Z

On 8/31/17 1:32 PM, ToddAndMargo wrote:
> On 08/31/2017 11:16 AM, Eric Sandeen wrote:
>> xOn 8/31/17 1:04 PM, ToddAndMargo wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> Fedora 26
>>> BIOS boot = legacy (EUFI give me hives)
>>>
>>> I have a SATA backup drive formatted gpt, one partition, xfs. I went into gparted, erased the partition, recreated the partition as ext4 and formatted it as ext4.
>>>
>>> Then I mounted it as ext4, copied some files to it, unmounted it. When I went to remount it, mount told me there was something wrong with ext4.
>>
>> What "something" was that?
>
> mount: /lin-bak: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdd1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so
^^^^^^^^^^^^

<snip>

>>> What is the official way to remove an xfs partition?
>>
>> It's not usually needed, but if you don't want the kernel and/or utilities to recognize an xfs block device as xfs anymore, simply zero the first 512 bytes of that block device.
>
> I can do that!
>
> I was concerned about the gpt stuff at the end of the drive.
> Ignored if I clobber the first 512 bytes?

The filesystem signature on a partition is a separate issue from
the partition table signatures on the disk...

-Eric