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I tried to create a PC-BSD start up/install on my usb flash drive using dd to try dual booting with it, and now I am left with a USB with only 1GB available instead of 16GB. The command I used was:

dd if=PCBSD10.1.1-RELEASE-01-31-2015-x64-DVD-USB.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

I was advised on their forums to use bs=1M on linux instead of bs=1m in the PC-BSD manual.

Gparted only sees 1Gb now and there seems to be no way to re-format. However, when I run startup disk creator on Ubuntu, it seems to see that it is a 16GB flash but has a red x indicating that I can't install to it, nor can I use the erase disk function.

Trying:

mkfs.vfat -I /dev/sdb

didn't help either.

Thanks.

Carl H
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Fr0sti3
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1 Answers1

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Open GParted, select you USB stick as device and choose "Device" → "Create Partition Table ..." to create a new Partition Table. By default, the right type for you is selected, just confirm. Then right-click on the empty storage space is shows you to create a new partition.

UTF-8
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  • I have tried that. The one offered was msdos, but it did not work. Thank you for your answer. Should I try something other than msdos for my usb flash? – Fr0sti3 Apr 03 '15 at 09:58
  • Does GParted show you the 16 GB you should have? Does dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/null bs=8M show you the 16 GB you should have? (this command can take some time) – UTF-8 Apr 03 '15 at 10:03
  • Interesting, after a reboot of the pc, now gparted is showing the full 14.92GB. And the dd one returns 16GB. I know it is way off topic, any ideas what I can do to get the dd command I tried to use to make a bootable bsd usb flash to work? – Fr0sti3 Apr 03 '15 at 10:57
  • Reboot is sometimes necessary to inform the kernel. It probably isn't 14.92 GB but 14.94 GiB. 161,000^3/1,024^3 = 14.901161194, so you should have 14.901161194 GB of storage space and the manufacturer usually gives a little bit more, which is why yours got 14.92 Gi*B. But I don't understand you current problem. I thought you already did the dd you mentioned in your original post to create the startup usb stick and now want back. The dd above will indeed make you a startup usb stick. However, this will of course destroy your partitions. If you use startup disk creator, this won't happen. – UTF-8 Apr 03 '15 at 11:31
  • (I ran out of characters in my previous comment) To clarify: You only need to do either the dd or use startup disk creator. Either will do, but you can't combine them. Well, actually you can first use startup disk creator and then use dd, but dd will destroy what you previously did. – UTF-8 Apr 03 '15 at 11:32