Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 00:03:37 -0400 From: "J. Kanowitz" <jkanowitz@snet.net> To: freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org Subject: OT: Magneto-Optical formatting, partitioning, 2940UW quirks? Message-ID: <3D2FA699.8030807@snet.net>
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I know this is likely not the best list, but where else am I going to
find people who've actually encountered MO systems in practice, eh?
In my case, I'm fighting with a Fujitsu M2512A. Dated by modern
standards, yes, but at $2/ea off eBay, I'm rather happy about the pile
I've picked up. The main 'problem' I've got has nothing to do with
SCSI, but rather, the bizarre partitioning and formatting buzzwords
developed by Fujitsu and the MO consortium. I'd like to get some
feedback from someone else using the critters, to know if any of what
I've guessed is accurate.
Basically, it sounds like there are 3 ways to partition and format an MO
disk; "NSR," which appears to be the spec whence UDF springs, and
amounts to UDF plus a proscribed partitioning scheme I've yet to
understand, "SuperFloppy" - which may or may not amount to newfs_msdos
/dev/da#c, and something I've forgotten the TLA for, which amounts to
creating a regular x86-style? partition table, and formatting the
partition as desired. The "mo230" entry in /etc/disktab seems to mesh
with the last point; luckily, these M2512s seem to be what IBM rebadged
as the MTA-3230, or I wouldn't have gotten that far.
Now, sadly, all the noob-documentation for this sort of thing seems to
be 1. in Japanese, and 2. written for 3.x. I'm not as stupid as I sound
here, but I put aside the partitioning/formatting headache for a while,
and now it's biting me as I run out of space on my main disks. (Yes,
I'm broke, so no shiny new 80gbs for me.)
There are 2 main tasks that likely anyone with an MO would like to
perform, these are:
1. Partitioning and formatting a sane and optimized UFS for personal
storage, and..
2. Partitioning and formatting a proper FAT for interoperability with
Windows and other systems, especially until UDF support trickles into
releases.
If anyone knows about any aspect of this- what's "accepted practice" in
terms of format on consumer-grade MO, is the mo230 entry still "the
right thing" for UFS use, what does Windows produce/expect to see when
an MO's formatted with its built-in support?- I'd be much appreciative,
and be glad to try to congeal all this into a FAQ or HOWTO when I'm
done. (For the record... I'm no stranger to partitioning, but I *am* a
cluebie when it comes to UFS/FFS-the-filesystem.)
---
While I'm at this, I do notice one small, unusual SCSI behavior with the
MO drive hooked up. My small mess of a setup consists of the following:
FreeBSD obie 4.6-RC FreeBSD 4.6-RC #0: Thu May 30 22:35:22 EDT 2002
floid@obie:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/OBIE i386
ahc0: <Adaptec 2940 Ultra SCSI adapter> port 0xe800-0xe8ff mem
0xd9000000-0xd9000fff irq 11 at device 9.0 on pci0
da2 at ahc0 bus 0 target 3 lun 0
da2: <FUJITSU M2512A 1510> Removable Optical SCSI-2 device
da2: 5.000MB/s transfers (5.000MHz, offset 8)
da2: 217MB (446325 512 byte sectors: 64H 32S/T 217C)
da1 at ahc0 bus 0 target 1 lun 0
da1: <SEAGATE ST32272W 0876> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-2 device
da1: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 8, 16bit), Tagged Queueing
Enabled
da1: 2157MB (4419464 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 275C)
da0 at ahc0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <SEAGATE ST32272W 0876> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-2 device
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 8, 16bit), Tagged Queueing
Enabled
da0: 2157MB (4419464 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 275C)
...it seems that, even when booted into DOS, having the MO drive on the
chain causes the two Seagates to give a small "chug" once every 30
seconds or so- not in perfect sync, but on a fairly regular basis. The
bus activity LED doesn't flash, at least not visibly- the 2940UW doesn't
quite put out enough current for the LED in my case, so it's fairly dim
unless I'm doing sustained activity.
I don't get any errors on the FreeBSD console, nor am I losing any data
or really suffering for performance, so I'm not concerned enough to have
tried to chase the issue down... but anyone want to make a guess for the
sake of it?
--
Hope I haven't distracted anyone for too long from their day jobs; I
*know* this is about the most malformed way to post on a list, but I'm
burnt out and at least hoping I can find an MO guru to have educated
conversation with.
CCs are appreciated, as are private responses if this is as OT as I
think it is.
-Thanks!
-Joe Kanowitz
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