I just got one of these Hitachi 4Gb microdrives in the hopes that I would be able to set up a decent swap area for compiling large programs, but so far, all the SL-6000 reports is Anonymous Memory. The drive does not spin up, nor can I fdisk/mke2fs/mount /dev/hda.

Is there anything missing? I know there is an ipk with hdparm on it, and my next step is to install that to see what I can get out of the device, but I think my problem is more basic than that.

I hate replying to my own post but I found the other posts regarding this kind of problem with certain Hitachi microdrives. We can add 47C to the list of incompatible drives. It was too cheap to be true! $114 + Shipping and it will only work in certain MP3 players (according to the website where I bought it).

I wonder if there is a way to update the firmware available from Hitachi?

Anyone want to try and persuade Hitachi for this?

If you can, try the drive in other devices, like pcmcia adapter on a laptop or something, maybe in a digital camera. If it doesn't spin, there's something seriously wrong with the drive. Give those guys a call. I had one of these drives last November that worked for over a week while storing some Oggs for a road trip. It worked ok, but stopped working as soon as I got back. It was hosed. I called up Hitachi and they RMA'd it for me. The one I got back from them works like a champ. There is something like 2 year warranty on these things, so don't toss it out. The only thing I had trouble with was cutting up foam for an "approved shipping container". Weird.