On Saturday 19 March 2005 01:20, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> Kaj Haulrich wrote:
> > On Thursday 17 March 2005 17:16, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> >>Mr. Geek wrote:
> >>>Kaj; I think Anne has the right idea. I have several clients
> >>>using external USB drives instead of other types of backup
> >>>drives/media. Many of them came partitioned and pre-formatted
> >>>as FAT32, but Diskdrake made fast work of it.
> >>>
> >>>One thing you should consider though, is that it helps
> >>>sometimes to delete the mount-point folder right after you
> >>>unmount the drive and before you attempt to delete the FAT32
> >>>partition.
> >>>
> >>>Your problem may have something to do with that. If not, then
> >>>this will make sure that drive access and permissions are
> >>>updated at the least.
> >>>
> >>>If necessary, go to the harddrive manufacturer's website and
> >>>download their diagnostics tools. Some like Maxtor have a
> >>>bootable ISO image you can download and use to reformat the
> >>>drive back to factory standards. Others have the same type of
> >>>tools which can be run from a bootable floppy diskette.
> >>>
> >>>Worst-case, you can remove the hard drive from it's USB case
> >>>and temporarily connect it as a slave drive on your Linux box.
> >>>Once Diskdrake sees the drive you can proceed normally and
> >>>delete and create new partitions and re-format the drive the
> >>>way you prefer.
> >>>
> >>>Your problem might also be that the circuitry in the USB box
> >>>itself may have either a hardware or software 'Lock' system.
> >>>Check your owners manual for the USB box to see if it does.
> >>>Once more possibility is that the controller chip in the USB
> >>>case does not support Linux, but I find that highly unlikely.
> >>>
> >>>IN all cases, you'll have to unmount the drive from diskdrake
> >>>to begin the process, so keep that in mind.
> >>
> >>One problem you run into with the tools from the drive
> >>manfacturer is that most of them do not enable USB support, so
> >>they will not even see the drive. This will hopefully change as
> >>externel USB and Firewire drives become more popular, but for
> >>now, you just about have to create a special boot disk if you
> >>want to work on something other then a IDE of SCSI drive.
> >>(OpenDOS has some nice boot disks...)
> >>
> >>Mikkel
> >
> > Thanks Mikkel, but you see I just don't have a Windows boot
> > disk. Neither have my daughter, who has a WinXP box. I tried
> > to figure out a way to let her Windows (DOS) format the
> > external harddisk, but gave it up, 'cause there is no point in
> > it : I still can't get a decent file system on it, no matter
> > what. Maybe NTFS is usable but then I can't write to it from
> > my Linux box, the whole idea being to use it as a transport
> > medium and backup between the two boxes.
> >
> > Well, I can still use my camera for transport....
> >
> > Kaj haulrich.
>
> The tools from the drive manfacturer are their own boot disk. You
> usualy download a program that creates the floppy. Then boot with
> the floppy. Or, if you don't like having the larger collection of
> floppies, you download the Ultimate Boot CD from
> http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and boot with that when you need
> the tools.
>
> Mikkel
Good heavens, Mikkel. How did you find that ?
I'll dive into it ASAP.
Now, just don't let us get carried away : I wanted some method to
defrag this crappy Microsoft FAT32 file system. WindowsXP can't do
it. Neither can Linux. So, I figured that backing up the entire
content, re-formatting and restoring might be the way to go.
But as the file system seems to be "hard coded", and I know that
Linux can "fix anything", I'll download your Floppy-CD, lean back
and watch the battle....
Have a nice week-end...
Kaj Haulrich.
--
*Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation*
*Running Linux Mandrake 10.1*
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