usb partition cannot be shared by win and linux

yosato_uk · 08-17-2006, 11:20 AM

Hi all,

I'd like to ask a question on a USB problem which really baffles me.

I wanted to use my 2GB USB MP3 player for two purposes (in fact as a Live distro as well as MP3, but this now seems too ambitious a plan...) so cut the player into two partitions, one small and the other large, and formatted both with FAT16, on Windows. Still on Windows, I put an MP3 file (let's call this File A) in the large partition and then re-plugged the player onto a linux (gentoo) machine. But for some reason, I could not mount the partition, although it seems detected at /dev/sda2 -- error message in the log says 'can't find the FAT system'. So, I decided to format it (again?) with mkfs.vfat. Then, I was able to mount it. I put some other MP3 file (call it File B) there.

Then a strange thing happened. When I came back to Windows, I still see the *old* file I previously saved, namely File A, and when I switch back to Linux, I see File B, as if the same partition is used completely separately!!

Can anybody suggest what the possible cause is, and how to rectify the problem so that I can access the same files in the same partition both from Win and Linux? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance
Yo

theYinYeti · 08-18-2006, 04:22 AM

I'll start with the dumb answer first: are you sure you're not dealing with a separate partition each time, as you said you had two?

Else, for what it's worth... I often have a strange issue with my digital camera. It has a bug: sometimes, it "forgets" about the previously created dcim/ folder, and creates a new dcim/ folder! Impossible you say

yet it is true.
This leads me to the interesting part: When I go into dcim/ on Linux (cd /mnt/camera/dcim/), I see by default the contents of the old dcim, whereas when I "mount" the card on Windows or view the pictures with the camera itself, I see the contents of the new dcim! The filesystem is FAT12 (obviously broken yet usable). Luckily for me, Linux is oh so powerfull, and I can issue the following commands to get everything back:

Code:

/mnt/camera$ mv dcim dcim.01
/mnt/camera$ mv dcim dcim.02
/mnt/camera$ cp -rf dcim.01 dcim.02 ~/saveJPG/

This may help you... or not. Good luck.

Yves.