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.
--
*Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation*
*Running Linux Mandrake 10.1*
____________________________________________________
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
____________________________________________________
