I found the reason for not being able to mount FAT drives, and that is because I was apparently using an older version of the kernel. I found loadlin.exe, which I was going to use to boot regularly, in the Lnx4win directory with vmlinuz (the kernel) and initsomething.gz. well that vmlinuz in Lnx4win directory is old, and if I boot using it I get incorrect kernel vers errors and can't mount vfat and msdos partitions. I figured out that I can boot with the bootdisk I made during installation and not get those errors, but now I just gotta figure out how to get the correct vmlinuz like the one on the bootdisk into my c:\linux directory. Matt Stegman wrote: > On 15 Aug, Will wrote: > > well I got those 2 emails telling me how to get into my windows drive > > but both of your approaches didn't work. I reinstalled linux somewhat > > successfully (for the 3rd time!) but get a few warnings about the wrong > > kernel ver in system.map and an error with mounting somewhere when > > booting. I don't know if loadlin is doing it since that was the first > > time I've used it. > > Could you quote the exact text of the messages? If they scroll off the > screen too quickly during boot, you should be able to use `dmesg` to view > boot messages from a command prompt. > > > How do I mount my FAT32X and FAT16B drives onto linux? Is vfat used for > > FAT32 and msdos used for FAT16? > > Nope. Both should accommodate FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32. The difference > between vfat and msdos is that "vfat" preserves Windows 95 long file names > (and lowercase letters!) while "msdos" uses the old MS-DOS 8.3 format. > > > I know the commands are: > mkdir /mnt/windows and /mnt/ddrive > > mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows and > > mount -t msdos(i'm assuming for fat16) /dev/hda5 /mnt/ddrive > > I've tried both in the console as root and it says unknown file system > > or something like that. > > Well, that would suggest that either a) you don't have these filesystems > compiled into the kernel or b) the module isn't loaded (although it should > be by default). Again, it might help if you included the exact error > text. Since you've already re-installed twice, and are experiencing other > problems, you really might try re-installing again. A stock installation > of Mandrake should have full support for DOS/Windows filesystems. > > > of the FAT16 and FAT32 file systems, which is superior in file > > read/write/transfer speed and efficiency? I purposely created another 2 > > gig FAT16 partition (faster than a 13 gig FAT32 partition) to hold all > > the stuff I want to host with linux. I'm under the impression that the > > smaller a partition is the faster and more efficient it becomes, and I > > feel this would be very important if I'm hosting and files are > > constantly being created/written/removed. please correct me if I'm > > wrong. > > I believe that FAT32 is faster than FAT16 for reading, writing, etc. > FAT32 also has the advantage of a smaller cluster size. What does this do > for you? Well, let's say you have a small file you save on your drive- > only 1 or 2 kilobytes. On a 2GB FAT16 partition, cluster size is 64kB, so > this file _occupies_ 64kB, even though it's less than 2kB in size. With a > FAT filesystem, every file must occupy an integer number of clusters. > Cluster size is determined by partition size. The smaller the partition, > the smaller the cluster size. I don't have the conversion table for > cluster size, but I know it's available on the Internet. FAT32 has smaller > cluster sizes for larger partitons- my 7.2GB drive was once formatted as a > single FAT32 partition with 4kB clusters. > > -Matt Stegman > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
