7

This afternoon I attempted to mount a .iso of Windows 7 to a bootable USB drive. It's about 370GiB, so more than enough to store it. I did the following to get myself into this mess. Note,/sda/disk2 is the right disk.

mightybee at mightybook.T-mobile.com in [~]   
12:06:27 › sudo dd if=/Users/mightybee/Desktop/en_windows_10_multiple_editions_version_1511_x64_dvd_7223712.iso of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m
12:10:21 › diskutil eject /dev/disk2

After that, I was left with a disk that was reformatted to look like this: diskutil

The disk is not bootable and doesn't do what I wanted it to do. Furthermore, the disk is actually un-reformattable, unreadable, and practically unusable. When I run eraseDisk, I get this:

diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 WINSEVEN /dev/disk2 
Unable to begin erase operation: The target disk is too small for this operation (-69771)

So my question is this: How do I regain the ability to erase and try another method to write to this disk?

2
  • What happens when you click the erase control in the screen capture above? What is the exact command for "eraseDisk" - I'm presuming it's diskutil.
    – bmike
    Commented Jun 1, 2016 at 19:47
  • Sorry about the cutoff: you're right, the full command for eraseDisk is diskutil. I was using DiskUtility.app just to display some info about the disk. Clicking erase (and using any format) returns an error with 'Name Invalid'. I tried using the FAT32 naming convention of all caps and it still returned that message.
    – haloux
    Commented Jun 1, 2016 at 19:49

1 Answer 1

15

Your command should work if your disk looks something like mine below (note disk1 vs disk2):

diskutil list disk1
/dev/disk1 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        +1.5 GB     disk1
   1:       Microsoft Basic Data WINSEVEN                1.5 GB     disk1s1

I would unmount the disk as opposed to ejecting it next time.

diskutil unmountDisk disk2

You can pull the drive and reconnect it and see if a lower level erase is possible.

diskutil eraseVolume FAT32 WIN8 /dev/disk2s1

I would expect you to use FAT32 with eraseVolume as opposed to eraseDisk so you might need to repartition things first and then try erasing the volume or recreating it.

diskutil partitionDisk disk2 1 MBR FAT32 WINSEVEN R

After the above command - you should have something similar to the below with the exception of disk2 replacing disk1

$ diskutil partitionDisk disk1 1 MBR FAT32 WINSEVEN R
Started partitioning on disk1
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for the disks to reappear
Formatting disk1s1 as MS-DOS (FAT32) with name WINSEVEN
512 bytes per physical sector
/dev/rdisk1s1: 2923976 sectors in 365497 FAT32 clusters (4096 bytes/cluster)
bps=512 spc=8 res=32 nft=2 mid=0xf8 spt=32 hds=255 hid=2 drv=0x80 bsec=2929726 bspf=2856 rdcl=2 infs=1 bkbs=6
Mounting disk
Finished partitioning on disk1
/dev/disk1 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        +1.5 GB     disk1
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 WINSEVEN                1.5 GB     disk1s1
1
  • 3
    Thanks. In case anyone comes searching, if you see "Error creating partition map: The target disk is too small for this operation (-69771)", then you should do diskutil unmountDisk disk3 first and then it works. Stupid error message. Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 0:45

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .