Removable Storage IV (IDE II)

Summary:

LS-120 aka '~SuperDisk'
ZIP
ORB
IDE Tape Drives

LS-120 aka '~SuperDisk'

The LS-120 ('~SuperDisk') is a drive for 120MB (formatted) media, which is also meant as a replacement for the floppy drive. The internal IDE variant seems to be the most popular one in desktop PCs. IDE floppies are handled by the

ide-floppy

driver.

BIOS settings

Make sure your BIOS supports booting from an LS-120. Most modern BIOSes (AMI, Award, Phoenix) do. One important thing is to remove all floppy support: set detection on the floppy controller to 'none' and remove the floppy option from the boot devices chain and replace it with the LS-120. Otherwise the drive will act just like any other IDE removable which spoils half the fun ;-). False BIOS settings are indicated by an 'ATAPI UNKNOWN' message during boot.

Accessing

The disks are preformatted with FAT and have no partition tables. Like with a floppy, you access the disk as a whole (no partition number after device file number). Example: If the drive is connected as slave to the second IDE port, you would access it via '/dev/hdd' (i.e.

mount /dev/hdd -t auto /mnt/disk

or add an appropriate line to '/etc/fstab').
Chances are that Mandrake has already done this for you ;-).
Of course you can reformat it to your liking, but then you have to use partition numbers to access the disk.

Booting

120MB is just the right size for a small portable GNU/Linux installation. The appropriate 'lilo.conf' should look like this (from linuxrouter.org):

> boot=/dev/hda compact disk=/dev/hda bios=0 install=/floppy/boot.b map=/floppy/map image=/floppy/linux label=Linux append="load_ramdisk=1" initrd=/floppy/root.bin ramdisk=8192

>The line "disk=/dev/hda bios=0" is what does the trick to make it boot the LS-120.

Making a simple boot disk for the current system seems to be a major pain. The

mkbootdisk

script provided with Mandrake doesn't accept any disks in a LS-120 (neither 120MB nor 1.44MB) and even if you get around this you are confronted with the problem that the LS-120 disk isn't where everyone expects it to be, that is /dev/fd0, and that it has different drive parameters, and - finally - the

ide-floppy

driver is compiled as a module, while you'd need it to be in the kernel. So you'll run into ~LiLo load errors or kernel panics.
You might want to try this patched version? instead (remember to make it executable). Please tell me if it works.

Furthermore there seem to be problems when using 'supermount' with these devices.

section index

ZIP

These drives come with "100MB" and "250MB" media (formatted size is smaller). They will be configured automatically during installation, the (linked) device file is '/dev/zip', mount directory is '/mnt/zip'.

Accessing

ZIP disks are partitioned. For Mac-compatibility the data partition is the fourth (i.e. '/dev/hd{x}4'). Everything else can be done using the standard tools (

fdisk

mke2fs

, 'supermount' etc) or the 'mtools' package.

One program you might be interested in is Lomega which copies some functions of Iomega's Windows Tools.

You should be able to boot them, if your BIOS supports booting from disks others than the first one.

section index

ORB

ORB from Castlewood uses "2.2GB" disks (formatted size smaller).
Caveats: the IDE-ORB drive can be switched between 'fixed' (ATA mode) and 'removable' (ATAPI mode) mode. It is shipped in 'fixed' mode. To make it 'removable', you have to use the Windows/Mac ORB tools. Otherwise you won't be able to swap disks during run-time but must power down your computer to do so.
If you use these disks for important backups, backup twice (well, you should do that anyway ;-)). Reports on the reliability of ORB disks are mixed.

Configuration

You should have the ORB drive as master /single on the second IDE port. Castlewood advises you explicitly not to use its drive as a slave to any ATAPI device (since you can switch from ATAPI to ATA mode with it, I'd guess), although it comes preconfigured as a slave device.

Access

You can access the drive after boot via '/dev/hdc'. Create a mount directory for it (e.g.

mkdir /mnt/orb

). ORB drives are pre-formatted to have their data on the first logical partition, i.e. '/dev/hdc5'. So the proper mount command would be

mount /dev/hdc5 -t auto /mnt/orb

. Add an appropriate line to '/etc/fstab', preferably let 'supermount' do the mounting.
To eject disks, use the

eject /dev/&#123;device&#125;

command.

You should be able to boot off them, if your BIOS supports booting from disks others than the first one.

section index

IDE Tape Drives

IDE Tape Drives are controlled by the

ide-tape

driver and are detected automatically (like all IDE devices). Currently only one IDE tape drive per system is supported.

Access

Although you will see something like

hdd: Seagate STT8000A, ATAPI TAPE drive

on startup, '/dev/hdd' is not the device file for handling the tape. It is '/dev/ht0' (rewind on close) or '/dev/nht0' (no rewind on close).
Tapes are usually used unmounted with the

mt

command and archiving programs like

tar

afio

(You can get an afio RPM from the 'RPMS2' directory of your favorite Cooker server).
Example:

mt -f /dev/ftape retension

rewinds the tape. Read

man mt

for more (I've never used a tape drive, so I can be of no help here).

section index

Next Item: SCSI

Related Resources:

Booting Linux with higher density floppy disks
LS-120 drives and Linux
Zip Drive Mini-HOWTO
Linux ORB

man mt

'ide-tape.c' in 'linux/drivers/block'

Revision / Modified: Sep. 11, 2001
Author: Tom Berger

Legal: This page is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License. Standard disclaimers of warranty apply. Copyright LSTB and Mandrakesoft.

KB - Removable Storage IV (IDE II)
Version 1.3 last modified by AdminWiki on 22/03/2004 at 09:44

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