Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 11:41:33 -0500 From: Bob Johnson <bob@eng.ufl.edu> To: t0ad775@yahoo.com Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: help (Zip disks won't mount) Message-ID: <3ABB7CBD.1963B50D@eng.ufl.edu>
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> Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 14:11:23 -0800 (PST)
> From: TOad Stool <t0ad775@yahoo.com>
> Subject: help
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>
> I own a iomega zip drive, and i have a problem. When i
> mount a zip, it gives me an error like "invalid
> argument". But only one out of the four, zip disks, i
> have will mount correctly. And all of them have the
> same file system. I used the mount_msdos command.
>
Different operating systems seem to format Zip disks
so that they are not inter-operable. One day I tried
formatting disks with Win 98 and Win 2K, and they
were unreadable to each other. They could both be
read under FreeBSD, but had to be mounted differently.
>
> like so, # mount_msdos /dev/afd0 /zip100
Try mount_msdos /dev/afd0s4 /zip100
and see if that helps. I've seen some evidence that
mounting with longnames helps, although I didn't follow
that up.
Here is my fstab for zip disks. The zip directories
are all symlinked to /zip, so once the disk is mounted,
it is always available as /zip
/dev/afd0s4 /zipx msdos rw,noauto,longnames 0 0
/dev/afd0s4 /zipu ufs rw,noauto 0 0
/dev/afd0 /zip msdos rw,noauto,longnames 0 0
I've found three techniques that help make Zip disks more
portable. The first is to use factory formatted disks and
never reformat them.
The second is to find a factory formatted disk, and use
dd to make an image of it. dd the image back out to a disk
that has been mangled by Windows, and it usually helps. I
don't remember what partition table you end up with.
The third is to use FreeBSD fdisk to edit the partition info
so that it is legal. It turns out that Zip disks, for some
mysterious reason, often have invalid partition tables. I've
seen a rumor that the invalid data is meaningful to Macs, but
I haven't confirmed that. If you can adjust the partition table
to:
part 1: unused
Part 2: unused
Part 3: unused
Part 4: sysid 6,(Primary 'big' DOS (> 32MB))
start 32, size 196576 (95 Meg), flag 80 (active)
beg: cyl 0/ sector 1/ head 1;
end: cyl 95/ sector 32/ head 63
you ought to end up with a Zip disk that is portable
between FreeBSD and Windows. Mount it on FreeBSD
from /dev/afd0. Don't let any version of Windows
reformat the disk.
Some day I'll spend more time looking in to this.
If I do, the results will be available at
http://www.afn.org/~afn01750/inspiron.html
>
> afd0 is my zip drive and /zip100 is the mount point
>
>
- Bob
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