Microdrive Problems, formating, applications, etc Options

[sgtron]

I bought a 5GB Seagate, it was very flakey and needed constant reboots, it would lose data and when I played MP3 files it would sometimes stop midway for a reboot before you could try to play that file again. You couldn't save mail to it, it would't even show up as an option in the mail to save mail there. It would also flake out during large file downloads.

I traded that in for a 4GB Hitachi drive, and it was much better. I could play mp3's without trouble, it never crashed and it could save my email....

But, the one problem I'm having is when you try to use the Voice Recorder it refuses to save data to the microdrive. It complains there's no space.. There's plenty of space, it's a 4GB drive. I thought there might be a problem since it was formated Fat 16, so I reformated ext2.. no dice.

In fact, when I formated it ext2, I could no longer save my email on there. So I went back and reformatted it to FAT16. Magic, now I can put my mail there again. But still can't save the Voice Recorder data there.

I know this is the drive of choice out there so I'd appreciate if one of you could try to record on it and let me know if it works.. if so maybe we can figure out what I did wrong to mess it up.

Two Questions:

1. Does Zaurus 6000 require FAT 16 for the apps (email etc) to work?
2. Why does Voice Recorder not record to Microdrive?

Many thanks if anyone can help.

UPDATE:: I also can't install to the Microdrive either... Same problem as the Voice Recorder, It gripes there isn't enough space even though there's plenty. Thoughts on this are welcome as well.

[gdog]

Sgtron,
FWIW I couldn't record to either SD or CF either.

Regards,

gdog

[sgtron]

See, that's my problem, I have a 16MB CF card that I can record to just fine. It just seems weird that only with microdrives do I get this problem. Now I hear you can't record to SD card either. It just kinda worries me that Sharp puts out a crappy product. With my 5500 I could flash to Openzaurus and be cool, but with the 6000 I'm stuck with the Sharp Rom until Openzaurus matures more on this platform.

Still, thanks for your input, glad to know I'm not alone with this recording problem. Of course if anyone out there *can* record to a 4GB Hitachi drive or install programs on it I'd love to hear.

[gdog]

This may be more about the kernel not fully supporting the 4gb filesystem, as opposed to the 6K being crappy. I also cannot get the "Zaurus File Transfer" app to see the microdrive. It works just fine in the Z, or if I connect it to the PC via a USB adapter, but I was not able to link the two together via the transfer app, regardless of what I did. I'll bet the difference between this ROM and the C3K ROM has some device driver changes to allow the Z to work better with the large filesystem that the Hitachi is running, though at FAT16 you probably have at least two partitions, right?

On the other hand, one of the great things about this Board though is that if it can be done, someone will do it sooner or later, and be willing to share their secret!

Regards,

gdog

[the_oak]

Have you checked to see if it is a permissions problem? I chmoded the mount point and the device file to get my SD card to allow me to write to it after I formatted it to ext2. Maybe try:
chmod 777 /dev/hda1
chmod 777 /mnt/whatever

Also may have to do that to any directories already existing.

Might also check fstab and put "user" in there.

[gdog]

Mine is owned by root but the permissions were wide open. On my Z /dev/hda1 isn't even in the fstab file, yet it mounts. I'm hesitant too mess with it because of some of the PFM that Sharp does to make Linux work on such a tiny kernel. Don't want to break anything that might require a call into their nonexistant support organization...

Regards,

gdog

[stuffman]

I had a few problems initially with my Seagate ST1 (ripped from a Rio Carbon), but everything seems to work well after fdisk-ing it to use Win95 FAT32 (LBA) (I think it's hex C), and using mkfs.vfat -F 32. Things seem to work much better now, as before I would copy files and get that "out of space" message, or the drive would stop responding. Occasionally, when the Zaurus "sleeps," it will stop responding, but a quick cardctl eject followed by cardctl insert get things back on track. Probably should add that to the suspend script...

[Omicron]

Did you guys try fdisking and formatiing using this method ?

(originally for the C860, but should work for all Z's)

Formatting a Microdive for use with Z.

[sgtron]

I had tried that exact method with my 5GB Seagate, but it didn't work completely.. drive kept freaking out on me.. losing data at odd times.. things like that. I switched it for a 4GB Hitachi and it works much better.. out of the box..

Only thing is I couldn't get my voice recorder to save data to it, or install programs on it. No such problems with my 1GB SD card.. that seems to be cool.

Interesting thing, for some reason, for like a day or two... , suddenly I could record to my Microdrive.. then I couldn't again.. I didn't do anything special either time.. it makes no sense. Please note I've always been able to save data on the drive.. just not install proggies or record voice data.. wild.

[scheck.r]

Same problem here with my Hitachi microdrive formatted as ext2 following the HowTo for formatting microdrives. I can't install on it ("Not enough storage memory for installation") nor record audio on it.
I don't have any problem with my standard CF formatted as ext2.
I have set the permissions on the microdrive the same as on my regular CF to be sure. I did also
umount /mnt/cf
mount -t ext2 /dev/hda1 /usr/mnt.rom/cf
in case the automounting went wrong. I tried formatting starting at block #1 and at #2, same problem. But I can read/write on it.

Any idea ?

I am using stock Sharp rom on my 6k

[cosmos7]

My Hitachi 4GB works fine. Couldn't get the ext2 partition to automount from fstab, but I added a line at the end of init to get around that. Once mounted, symlinked a bunch of stuff to give me plenty of room to install things...

[scheck.r]

Can you please provide more precisely what you did ?
What you wrote ? in which file ? which directory ...

Thanks

[cosmos7]

Can you please provide more precisely what you did ?
What you wrote ? in which file ? which directory ...

Thanks

Sorry, my mistake. I had added a line to /etc/rc.d/rc.modules to load the shfs module I had compiled.

To enable swap (I run a swap partition on the Hitachi) and to mount the main partition, I created a boot script in /etc/rc.d/rc5.d to do what was needed. Kind of a tacky hack I'll agree, it works.

CODE

/etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S10cf_mount
---------------------------------

#!/bin/bash

mkswap /dev/hda1
swapon /dev/hda1

mount /dev/hda6 /files

of course that will likely be different on your Z, depending upon how you partitioned...

[undrwater]

I was wondering if maybe you couldn't format the drive ext2, then create a directory and make a symbolic link in your /home/zaurus?

It's what I'm doing for NFS mounts to watch vids and listen to mp3's (since you can't seem to browse the full directory structure).

You should even be able to save your emails there.

I'm interested as I've discovered that files created by the voice recorder can be used by Dragon NaturallySpeaking!

I'm in the ebay market for a 4GB Hitachi.

[cosmos7]

Well I do have the main partition on my Hitachi formatted ext2, but I'm not symlinking it to /home, I'm symlinking most of /usr to it; anything not required at boot time. That way I have tons of space to install applications... easy to go the other way though.