zip drive IDE

[Guest drdavis]

I can plug in my usb zip drive post-boot, and can see and use it just fine.

However, only when I insert a not-so-floppy-disk that was previously

formatted and used.

 

When I insert a new disk, I get

No medium found

 

ls -l /mnt gives:

drwxrwxrwx 0 brian brian 0 Nov 2 21:03 zip/

 

grep zip /etc/fstab gives:

none /mnt/zip supermount dev=/dev/sda4,fs=auto,--,umask=0,user,codepage=850,iocharset=iso8859-1,kudzu 0 0

 

I am unable to get a linux filesystem onto a new floppy.

 

I tried formatting on a Windoze box, but it only does fat, fat32, or ntfs

 

Any suggestions?

[scarecrow]

Simply use fat32 (vfat), Linux has full I/O abilities on that filesystem right out of the box.

Just curious why it's /dev/sda4 though- how many partitions the zip floppy has?

Edited November 3, 2005 by scarecrow

[pmpatrick]

Usb zip drives are always designated sda4 in my experience; have no idea why. I guess it's just the way they are set up. It does not indicate that there are any other partitions on the zip disk. The first and only partition on the zip disk is sda4.

[Guest drdavis]

I tried to format fat32 on a Windoze box,

no luck.

[scarecrow]

I tried to format fat32 on a Windoze box,

no luck.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Any chance the tape (or the drive) being borked then?

And anyway, USB flash drives are readily usable anywhere without the need for any drivers (DOS and quasi DOS, aka Windows 9X, excluded), including Linux, take "slightly" less space than a zip drive for little money (an average 512M pen drive costs currently no more than thirty dollars).