Some guys just gave (yes, gave) me a brand new, still in sealed package, 128mb micro-drive. I had doubts with it working in Linux but I gave it a shot. I plugged it in and turned on my hardware browser. Voila, listed in the Hard Drives was a 127 mb Fat 16 Partition on /dev/sda1, yahoo!. So I immediately setup my mountpoint and entries needed in fstab. There is where I have trouble. I have tried the following entries:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/memstick vfat noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

and

/dev/sda1 /mnt/memstick msdos noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

With this result:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1,
or too many mounted file systems

And if I use:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/memstick auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

I get:
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

Any recommendations?

Awww, come on!

Poking and prodding around in a few webpages and chat rooms has brought to my attention that maybe Fat16 support may not be enabled. How would I enable this if it is true?

Check to see if /dev/sda1 really exists. If so, check if it is mounted by something else when you plug it in... (who knows? ) Try to make a binary copy of /dev/sda1 to your drive... Issue this (make sure you have enough disk space)

Now, if it is formatted properly, you can try to mount it...

I'm not 100% sure about the mount command (check man mount if it doesn't work).

Now you should be able to see the contents of the drive in /mnt/sda1. If mount fails (bad fs type), it probably means that /dev/sda1 is not formatted and should be formatted (try formating with fat)...

Good luck!

According to the hardware browser on my system, there is a 127 Mb Fat16 partition on /dev/sda1. It just wouldn't mount. As far as the command you asked me to try, as soon as I typed the first one as root, my USB drive showed activity for about 15 - 20 minutes and came out to 1 Gb out of a 128 mb stick. Then attempting the second command it told me:
mount: fs type fat not supported by kernel
Then I changed the fs arguement to just about every filesystem I could try and could only get it mounted using the usbfs filesystem. And when it did, it showed weird stuff. Not really any comprehensible data. Any theories?

BTW, my model# is USM128U2

You could do the following, as root (as a test)

mkdir /mnt/microdrive

mount -t auto /dev/sda1 /mnt/microdrive

The auto option will make your system probe the partition then try to match the partition type to the list of supportable partition types on your system. By default RedHat 7.3 <i>should</i> support fat.

BTW the reason that the line

mount -t fat xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx failed is that fat is not a filetype that is suppored. The option is vfat.

Hope this helps.

Try mounting it without the options,
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/microdrive
add -t vfat if necessary. I had this issue with some vfat partition I tried to mount with some option that wasn't allowed... Don't remember which.

I'm not sure why you got an output of 1Gb, but must be something related to my command... Anyway, have you tried formatting the /dev/sda1 first? Maybe there's something wrong with the current filesystem...

Maybe run a fdisk /dev/sda1 and see if there's something comprehensible there...

Using the auto option only tells me to specify through an error message. And trust me, according to Windows 98 and the hardware browser on linux both tell me it's fat16. The vfat option gives me an error. I attempted to recompile my kernel to support fat16, but the new kernel gave a kernel panic signal. Is there a way to create a fat32 partition with only 128mb?

Yeah making a fat32 partition is easy. As root do the following

fdisk /dev/sda

m (to list the commands in fdisk)

d (to delete the existing partition - you will have to specify which one but there should only be the one anyway)

n (to add a new partition - make it an extended partition)

specify the size (just say all of it)

then after the partition is created you will have to change the type to fat32 by selecting t

select the partition number (prolly 1) then press l to see the partition types that you can select. fat32 is type b

then all that you will have to do is format it. You can either do this with mkfs or just boot into windows and do it.

BTW this was how I setup my 512MB sandisk.

The thing is that fat32 was intended for disks larger than 512 MB... Normally (windows, for example) will create a fat16 filesystem on a 128Mb drive... But I don't think it's impossible to create a fat32 filesystem on a 128Mb drive...

If it still fails, try to create a ext2 filesystem instead and test it around...

I attempted formatting the microdrive as ext3 and ext2, and it, as best as I an describe, does wierd things. I can't really describe it. But I don't think this device was meant to be formatted into other filesystems. Getting the kernel to support fat 16 has also been a pain. I tried to recreate a new kernel with fat16 support via kcontrol and the standard make, make install, etc. And I got kernel panic when I tried it. Maybe the next version of RH will have these things enabled by default, and come ready for a microdrive.

Does it complain when trying to format the microdrive to something else than fat? If so, what is the error message?

nope, just acted wierd, like froze up, then went back to fat16...just plain weirdness.