[PLUG] The battle for IOmega Ext. USB 250 Drive

Derek Loree drl at drloree.com
Tue Sep 30 09:46:01 UTC 2003


On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 16:10, guy1656 wrote:
> This is REALLY getting frustrating:
> 
> I have an IOmega External ZIP drive (250MB)
> 
> It is simply a bitch to connect to my Mandrake 9.0 Box.
> 
> A good friend who first set up the system for me set it up so that I could 
> jist type "mount /mnt/zip" from a command window and it would behave, just 
> like say, mounting a floppy disk.
> 
> Then the computer changed, and figgured out how to disobey the command. Months 
> ago, when I posted to this forum, a kind soul suggested:
> 
>  mount -t vfat /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part4 /mnt/zip

This really should be the most reliable way of mounting the thing.  As
far as I can tell, there could only be four things that might have
changed;  the bus number, the target number, the lun number, or the
partition number.  The partition number will only change if you have
repartitioned the disk, try part1 instead.  The lun number probably
didn't change (I think only real scsi buses use it).  The target number
may have changed if you have plugged in some other USB device that acts
like a block device, try target1 instead.  The bus number might have
changed if you have plugged the drive into a different USB port, try
bus1 instead.

The log file should help out (/var/log/syslog), it should let you know
what it finds when the drive is plugged in.
> 
> ... and that was miraculous. Then one day it too stopped working. The computer 
> had figured out a way to beat me again.
> 
> So I installed VMWare and run W2K inside it. Because file system sharing in 
> VMW 4.0 is straightforward enough for me to learn, I could fire up W2K, plug 
> in my zip drive and have an info-box pop up ("W@#$# has found new Hardware: 
> ZIP 250") and I could transfer files from the zip drive to my home directory 
> (or whereever.)
> 
> Then computer got wise that I was actually getting things done, and I learned 
> about "rmmod usb-storage" and "modprobe usb-storage."

The results of these commands should show up in the syslog file.
> 
> But the computer has beaten me again: now VMWare won't even 'see' the USB 
> drive when I plug it in.
> 
> MY QUESTION:
> 
> Is there an rpm (download & double-click to install, from your file system 
> GUI) that will allow the ZIP drive to operate as flexibly as PLUG-n-PLAY is 
> supposed to be? (OK, I'll tolerate one or two shell commands such as 
> 'mount.')
> 
About the only thing I can think of is hotplug, but it most likely is
already installed.

HTH,

Derek Loree





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