2.4.0-test10 -- Problem reading VFAT formatted ORB drive.

Hi,

I have an ORB drive I am accessing using the usb-storage driver. I formatted the drive media last night using Windoze 98. The media was formatted as though it had one large partition, which is weird because I had previously partitioned the drive under Linux 2.4.0-test10 with several partitions. The Windoze format utility did not notice those partitions and simply (I thought) wrote one large partition and formatted it as VFAT. I have successfully written and read data on the media using two separate Windoze 98 machines. When I mounted the drive under 2.4.0-test10 and then looked at the media with fdisk, here's what I see:

#> fdisk /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 68 heads, 62 sectors, 1021 cylinders Units = cylinders of 4216 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 ? 455397 584533 272218546+ 20 Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):

      phys=(356, 97, 46) logical=(455396, 22, 59)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
      phys=(357, 116, 40) logical=(584532, 18, 23)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary:
      phys=(357, 116, 40) should be (357, 67, 62)
/dev/sda2   ?    315509    443350 269488144   6b  Unknown
Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
      phys=(288, 110, 57) logical=(315508, 39, 57)
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
      phys=(269, 101, 57) logical=(443349, 17, 52)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary:
      phys=(269, 101, 57) should be (269, 67, 62)
/dev/sda3   ?    127844    459524 699181456   53  OnTrack DM6 Aux3
Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
      phys=(345, 32, 19) logical=(127843, 53, 18)
Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:
      phys=(324, 77, 19) logical=(459523, 53, 49)
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary:
      phys=(324, 77, 19) should be (324, 67, 62)
/dev/sda4   *    330795    330800     10668+  49  Unknown
Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
      phys=(87, 1, 0) logical=(330794, 2, 36)
Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
      phys=(335, 78, 2) logical=(330799, 6, 44)
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary:
      phys=(335, 78, 2) should be (335, 67, 62)

Partition table entries are not in disk order

When I try to mount the drive, I get the common error:

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/orb1
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1,
or too many mounted file systems

What's going on here? It seems to me that this is a bug in the Linux test10 filesystem support, since Windoze can read and write to this drive currently. Our implementation should be compatible.

Cheers,
Miles

I have an ORB drive I am accessing using the usb-storage driver. I formatted the drive media last night using Windoze 98. The media was formatted as though it had one large partition, which is weird because I had previously partitioned the drive under Linux 2.4.0-test10 with several partitions. The Windoze format utility did not notice those partitions and simply (I thought) wrote one large partition and formatted it as VFAT. I have successfully written and read data on the media using two separate Windoze 98 machines. When I mounted the drive under 2.4.0-test10 and then looked at the media with fdisk, here's what I see:

#> fdisk /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 68 heads, 62 sectors, 1021 cylinders Units = cylinders of 4216 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 ? 455397 584533 272218546+ 20 Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):

      phys=(356, 97, 46) logical=(455396, 22, 59)

What's going on here? It seems to me that this is a bug in the Linux test10 filesystem support, since Windoze can read and write to this drive currently. Our implementation should be compatible.

Quoted 20 lines · Miles Lane

I have an ORB drive I am accessing using the usb-storage driver. I formatted the drive media last night using Windoze 98. The media was formatted as though it had one large partition, which is weird because I had previously partitioned the drive under Linux 2.4.0-test10 with several partitions. The Windoze format utility did not notice those partitions and simply (I thought) wrote one large partition and formatted it as VFAT. I have successfully written and read data on the media using two separate Windoze 98 machines. When I mounted the drive under 2.4.0-test10 and then looked at the media with fdisk, here's what I see:

#> fdisk /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 68 heads, 62 sectors, 1021 cylinders Units = cylinders of 4216 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 ? 455397 584533 272218546+ 20 Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):

      phys=(356, 97, 46) logical=(455396, 22, 59)

...

Quoted 3 lines

What's going on here? It seems to me that this is a bug in the Linux test10 filesystem support, since Windoze can read and write to this drive currently. Our implementation should be compatible.

Well, clearly (i) you can read it, and (ii) you don't like the contents. With these removable disks there are often two possibilities:
either format the thing as a large floppy (without partition table) or format it as a disk.
Maybe you did the former. (In that case, "mount /dev/sda" might work.)

If you can't find out what happened, I wouldnt mind seeing the first 64 sectors or so.

(By the way, the geometry is interesting: 1021/68/62.
My web page says:
"The size is 2.2 GB. Castlewood recommends a C/H/S = 4273/16/63 geometry,
which multiplies out to 4307184 sectors, that is, 2205278208 bytes. The default geometry with which the IDE version of the drive is shipped gives only 528 MB."
Now 68*62*1021*512=2203922432, almost full capacity. I wonder who invented it.)

Andries
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