SDB:Using ZIP floppies
Request:
You want to use a ZIP drive with ZIP floppies in your system. We assume in the following explanation that your ZIP drive is known as /dev/sdb to your system.
Procedure:
ZIP floppies that come directly from your dealer are usually already partitioned and contain an MS-DOS file system. To achieve a better performance and handling under Linux, it is useful to use the ext2 file system.
These floppies are partitioned in a way that the primary partition with ID 4 is used for the file system (in our example, this is /dev/sdb4). Nobody would expect this. However, you can use this situation to perform a simple "automatic" detection of the file system type. The following predefinition is used:
- If a ZIP floppy should be used with a MS-DOS file system, it should be contained on the 4th primary partition.
- If a ZIP floppy should be used with the ext2 file system, it should be on the first primary partition.
The partitions on the ZIP floppy are created with fdisk (or with YaST). It is not necessary to reboot after the creation of the partitions on the ZIP floppy. Create the Linux file system ext2 using the following command:
mke2fs /dev/sdb1
A distinction according to the position of the partitions has the advantage that it is possible to create and specify different mount points for the two file systems. An automatic mount of the correct file system is then possible.
To achieve this, the following entry in /etc/fstab is required:
/dev/sdb1 /zip ext2 rw,user,noauto,exec /dev/sdb4 /dzip msdos rw,user,noauto,exec,umask=000
Create the mount points:
mkdir /zip mkdir /dzip
Then you can simply say
mount /zip
or
mount /dzip
If a floppy is prepared according to the rules given above, using mount reveals whether it is an MS-DOS or a Linux floppy: If an error occurs, it is the wrong file system. It is then also possible to determine from the mount point which file system was mounted. <keyword>zip-drive,ppa,diskette,floppy,partitioning,formatting,mkfs,mke2fs</keyword>