Re: ZIP Drives


Subject: Re: ZIP Drives
pac1@tiac.net
Date: Sat May 06 2000 - 07:08:39 MDT


root wrote:

> Alright i tried it with sda4, and it seemed to work, now i set it up for
> msdos, put in a dos formatted zip ( filled with mp3's) and it says that
> it is not set up for dos or impropter dos or something like that, any
> ideas?

              mkdir /zip
              mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /zip # or sdb4 or sdc4 depending on how
many scsi devices you have
              cd /zip
               ls

replace the sda4 with the appropriate letter for your zip drive's position in
your scsi chain.
I've got my internal hard drive at sda and my zip at sdb.

This worked on a YDL CS 1.2 install on a blue G3 rev 1. The kernel I'm using
may or may not be the one from the YDL CS 1.2 distribution or I may have updated
it. How can I find out such info about a running kernel?

The gory details:

I had tried /dev/sdb5 /mnt/zip dos
noauto 0 0

which does not work and gets the same error message you got .

The problem is that the software to interpret the dos file system is neither
compiled into the kernels we are running, nor is it in a module that is loaded.
It turns out dos is not the file system to use. vfat works and appears in the
kernel I'm using.

The relevant document is the ZIP-Drive, Zip Drive Mini-HOWTO

       http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/mini/ZIP-Drive.html

     Updated: January 1999. Provides a quick reference quide on setting up and
using the Iomega ZIP drive with Linux.

The relevant section of this mini howto talks about the vfat file system.

vfat is not dos.

Would it work if I put "vfat" in as the file system in /etc/fstab? I tried it
to find out. The message changed from "" to "mount: /dev/sdb5 is not a valid
block device" so next I tried the mount command exactly as it appears in the
howto. It worked.

bottom line for me on this one was: Read The Fine Manual!

"5.2 An existing DOS formatted disk

If you have a ZIP disk with a DOS file structure that was originally created by
Iomega's tools, the partition scan should say that the disk has one partition,
/dev/sda4.

You should make a place to mount the disk, lets say /zip, and then mount it as
an MS-DOS filesystem:

              mkdir /zip
              mount -t vfat /dev/sda4 /zip

You could also use msdos instead of vfat. vfat supports long filenames where
msdos does not. Now, the files on the disk should appear in /zip. While the disk
is mounted, you will
not be able to remove it. When you are finished with the disk you can umount it
to release it and detach it from your directory hierarchy.

              umount /zip

Once you've made the /zip mount point - you don't need to do it again, so you
could come back later and mount something else there. "



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