[weblacky]

I'm going to play devil's advocate and say the "exercise wiping method" is the BEST method I was ever told and works every time for me. Now granted, I'm using like 4-6GB (MAX) for most SGI systems. It has always been FASTER then a low-level SCSI format. I've found no other way to erase a disklabel without it (since the disklabel is throughout the drive...not at the start of the volume, like MBR or GPT).

This ensures a wipe on the disklabel (disk-wide), the miniroot, and everything. This works great because you don't get miniroot merges/collisions as well.

I do the same thing as this: https://forums.irixnet.org/thread-2027-p...l#pid13397

If you were doing a 18GB or larger disk, then I'd agree with you. For a 4GB disk..it's like 25 mins...works every time.

Doing MKFS on admin on inst never resulted in a problem-free install more than a blank disk, for me.