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Date:      Tue, 06 Feb 2001 17:27:34 -0500
From:      Bob Johnson <bob@eng.ufl.edu>
To:        root@vulpecula.universe, questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: cannot mount a zip drive
Message-ID:  <3A807A56.662E4EC1@eng.ufl.edu>

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> Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 18:33:02 +0800
> From: Charlie & <root@vulpecula.universe>
> Subject: cannot mount a zip drive
> 
> Hi
> 
> I tried to mount a zip disk formatted in FAT16 in a FreeBSD 4.2 system, but
> failed.  The zip drive would move when I issued the 'mount_msdos' command but
> reported error.  The following shows my procedures.  Any help would be
> appreciated.
> 

I have found that ZIP disks can be really tricky if you 
reformat them.  If you are using a factory-formatted ZIP 
disk you should have no problem.  ZIP disks that I format 
under Win 98 and Win 2000 cannot be read by each other, 
although with a little playing I can often read them in 
FreeBSD.  

Here are my fstab entries for ZIP disks: I just keep 
trying them until I find one that works for any particular 
disk.  The basic problem seems to be that each OS creates 
a partition table that the others consider illegal.

/dev/afd0s4             /zip            msdos   rw,noauto,longnames     0       0
/dev/afd0s4             /zipu           ufs     rw,noauto       0       0
/dev/afd0               /zipx           msdos   rw,noauto,longnames     0       0

The /zipu entry is obviously not relevant to your problem, 
and I don't remember which of the other two works with which 
OS.  Try the one you haven't tried already.

Also, I have managed to successfully reformat a Zip disk 
by using dd to create an image of a blank factory formatted 
disk, then writing that image to the disk to be formatted.  
The technique doesn't always work, which suggests that it 
shouldn't work at all and I don't know what I'm doing but 
am getting lucky...
  

> Alan Tsang
[...]
> vulpecula# mount_msdos /dev/afd0s1 /zip
> mount_msdos: /dev/afd0s1: Invalid argument

I was successful when I got up to afd0s4.  If you look 
at the partition table for the disk in question, you 
will see why.  Win 98 puts the data in the first partition, 
Win 2K puts it in the fourth, or maybe it's the other 
way around.

- Bob


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