Prepping The Drive, partitioning my new 8 Gb Seagate Options

[chuckr]

I have gotten a miracle to pass: the US PO actually delivered something on a Saturday! I got, Special Delivery, the package from China bearing my new drive. My problem is, I can't get it to format. I stuck it into my SL-C3000's external CF slot to format. I'd previously noted that the Zaurus referred to this as /dev/hda1, so I tried to do fdisk /dev/hda, but it responded with a "Unable to open /dev/hda". At the sdame time, /proc/partitions was reporting a 7.8 Gb partitin on /dev/hda, and dmesg was reporting a huge host of /dev/hda based errors.

So, zi decided to use my zMac to partition the Seagate, which it worked (via the flash memory write device) just fine. I made Unix filesystems, which I know won;'t be Zaurus compatible (but the formatting, it ought to be compatible, I think) but the same errors were obtained from the Zaurus. Will that external CF interface work with the Seagate drive? Is there any other thing I'm overlooking?

Thanks.

[Cresho]

you need to go into super user mode.

do a df in the terminal so you can see where you are at.

CODE

su
fdisk /dev/hda

or

fdisk /dev/hdc

you might need to umount but i can't remember.(correction..not needed)

make sure you read the warnings. The last one is important because it says that "the new table will be used until the next reboot." so a reboot is a must. You can't imagine what i went through one day trying to format my cf and trying to figure out why my commands didnt work.

[InSearchOf]

To change the partition table doesnt usually require a umount... just to format the partition it will require one... I dont understand the need for the "su" unless you are logged in as a non-root user... which in most cases "most" users use root primarily...
*NOT SAY THAT DOESNT DO THE TRICK*

Ugh... aslong as your getting a good responce from the Z in your dmesg I dont see where the problem lies...

One thing that might be a problem is it might be starving for power... I dont know if Seagate made diff models and decided to throw in a line of 5v Microdrives... I believe our Z's only support up to 3.3v devices... I mean I would think that there would be alot more problems other them the device not allowing fdisk.... Can you write to the drive on the Z it self... or is there no success with that either... If you can write to the Z and you hear a full spin up on insert and no jitteriness at spin up... you should be fine voltage wise...

try fdisk'ing on a linux box and format fat or ext2 just to start it out and hope for the Z to recognize it a lil better...

Late

[Cresho]

just be carefull.

your internal drive and your external drive can mix up. both can be either hda or hdc depending what was in the slot during boot up. Another thing. Changes will not occur until after a w during fdisk.

do a df in the terminal to find your compact flash.

[Da_Blitz]

If you fdisk a drive in use and change the partion size you can stuff things up but if you are just extending a partion or subdividing a partion you should be fine, just for refrence

[chuckr]

Well, all you folks who assumed that I didn't know about su were wrong, I did, that was never the problem. There MAY have been some problem, hda versus hdc, I don't completely understand what's going on there, but what I've been doing is "fdisk /dev/mmcda1", and on that, it's still failing witha "Unable to open mmcda" or "mmcda1" or "mmcda2", I ried all of them.

I treid inserting a known good flash in my CF slot, and it comes up as /dev/hda, so I have tried doing "fdisk /dev/hda", and that comes up slightly differently, with a "Unable to read /dev/hda" instead of "Unable to open ...". Dmesg show a horde of error messages for hda, too many to list here, but they fall into the categories of "hda:read_intr(status=0x51)",or "status=0x04", "hda racal_intr" with the same two statuses (51 and 4) and several "ide0 reset" commands.. I think it points to the fact that it's failing to actually READ the disk, somehow. The disk was already partitioned on my Mac, so that's not the problem.

Anyone know if there's any possible hardware or software difference between the internal and external CF slots?

[hvontres]

Well, all you folks who assumed that I didn't know about su were wrong, I did, that was never the problem.  There MAY have been some problem, hda versus hdc, I don't completely understand what's going on there, but what I've been doing is "fdisk /dev/mmcda1", and on that, it's still failing witha "Unable to open mmcda" or "mmcda1" or "mmcda2", I ried all of them.

I treid inserting a known good flash in my CF slot, and it comes up as /dev/hda, so I have tried doing "fdisk /dev/hda", and that comes up slightly differently, with a "Unable to read /dev/hda" instead of "Unable to open ...".  Dmesg show a horde of error messages for hda, too many to list here, but they fall into the categories of "hda:read_intr(status=0x51)",or "status=0x04",  "hda racal_intr" with the same two statuses (51 and 4) and several "ide0 reset" commands..  I think it points to the fact that it's failing to actually READ the disk, somehow.  The disk was already partitioned on my Mac, so that's not the problem.

Anyone know if there's any possible hardware or software difference between the internal and external CF slots?

Which Model # and firmware is your seagete drive? There were problems with Seagete ST1 drives with firmware newer than 3.03 only working as ide drives and the Zaurus only being able to deal with CF compatible drives. There were several threads on that issue ~6-8 months ago.

[Cresho]

yep! I read those threads as well.

[chuckr]

Well, all you folks who assumed that I didn't know about su were wrong, I did, that was never the problem.  There MAY have been some problem, hda versus hdc, I don't completely understand what's going on there, but what I've been doing is "fdisk /dev/mmcda1", and on that, it's still failing witha "Unable to open mmcda" or "mmcda1" or "mmcda2", I ried all of them.

I treid inserting a known good flash in my CF slot, and it comes up as /dev/hda, so I have tried doing "fdisk /dev/hda", and that comes up slightly differently, with a "Unable to read /dev/hda" instead of "Unable to open ...".  Dmesg show a horde of error messages for hda, too many to list here, but they fall into the categories of "hda:read_intr(status=0x51)",or "status=0x04",  "hda racal_intr" with the same two statuses (51 and 4) and several "ide0 reset" commands..  I think it points to the fact that it's failing to actually READ the disk, somehow.  The disk was already partitioned on my Mac, so that's not the problem.

Anyone know if there's any possible hardware or software difference between the internal and external CF slots?

Which Model # and firmware is your seagete drive? There were problems with Seagete ST1 drives with firmware newer than 3.03 only working as ide drives and the Zaurus only being able to deal with CF compatible drives. There were several threads on that issue ~6-8 months ago.

I have a ST68022CF, date code 06281, P/N 9AN417-501, S/N 3NX0JS1T, I think that there is a FW: 3.01 on tere also.

I begin to suspec taht the fdisk I am using, Sharp's, is no good. Is ehrt another compatible one somewhere? I can use my USB writer to write (partition + format) this drive fine on the Mac, so I think it's not a bad drive. I am seeing error s in /var/log/dmesg that indicate that it can't read the partitining info.

[InSearchOf]

Flash to pdaXrom and use the fdisk on there.... It has never let me down...

*I wont tell*

[Meanie]

Well, all you folks who assumed that I didn't know about su were wrong, I did, that was never the problem.  There MAY have been some problem, hda versus hdc, I don't completely understand what's going on there, but what I've been doing is "fdisk /dev/mmcda1", and on that, it's still failing witha "Unable to open mmcda" or "mmcda1" or "mmcda2", I ried all of them.

I treid inserting a known good flash in my CF slot, and it comes up as /dev/hda, so I have tried doing "fdisk /dev/hda", and that comes up slightly differently, with a "Unable to read /dev/hda" instead of "Unable to open ...".  Dmesg show a horde of error messages for hda, too many to list here, but they fall into the categories of "hda:read_intr(status=0x51)",or "status=0x04",  "hda racal_intr" with the same two statuses (51 and 4) and several "ide0 reset" commands..  I think it points to the fact that it's failing to actually READ the disk, somehow.  The disk was already partitioned on my Mac, so that's not the problem.

Anyone know if there's any possible hardware or software difference between the internal and external CF slots?

Which Model # and firmware is your seagete drive? There were problems with Seagete ST1 drives with firmware newer than 3.03 only working as ide drives and the Zaurus only being able to deal with CF compatible drives. There were several threads on that issue ~6-8 months ago.

I have a ST68022CF, date code 06281, P/N 9AN417-501, S/N 3NX0JS1T, I think that there is a FW: 3.01 on tere also.

I begin to suspec taht the fdisk I am using, Sharp's, is no good. Is ehrt another compatible one somewhere? I can use my USB writer to write (partition + format) this drive fine on the Mac, so I think it's not a bad drive. I am seeing error s in /var/log/dmesg that indicate that it can't read the partitining info.

that's an old issue, the fdisk that comes with sharp rom is buggy as hell. i am surprised you are still using it instead of a newer bug fixed version.

[Cresho]

I thought it was my imagination but it is buggy...

how about this one


http://www.oesf.org/index.php?title=Downloads

fdisk_2.11g-4_2_arm.ipk I have never tried it because supposedly we have a fdisk.