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Formatting ZIP discs with Fedora Core 1?

I need help!!!! I have an external ZIP 250 USB which works fine. I have an existing formatted 100Mb disc that works fine. I now need to know how the hell do I format another 100Mb zip disc? I can't understand how I could have possibly got the first disc to work. Mind you I was using Knoppix 3.3 at the time....could it have formatted the disc when I initially tried to mount the drive? Is there a similar command to that of good old DOS 'format <drive> etc etc in Linux?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm trying to get my new OpenOffice 1.1.1 download safely stored onto the disc.

Cheers

(From the ZIP mini-HowTo:)

Quote:

5.3 Re-format as a native Linux disk

If you want to erase a ZIP disk and make a Linux native file system on it. You should use fdisk on the entire disk:

fdisk /dev/sda

and delete any existing partitions (with the d command). Then create a new partition with the n command, make it primary partition number 1, use w to write the partition table to disk, and quit with q.

Format the partition

mke2fs /dev/sda1

(The 1 is the number that you gave this partition in fdisk). Now you can mount the disk:

mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /zip

(re-using that mount point we created before).

Yippee fixed!!!!! Thank you Komakino I was pulling my hair out over this one. I've managed to work out 99.9% of all my Linux "issues" but this one stumped me.

Oh and as a pat on my back I finally managed to get Mplayer working. I had to download about 15 rpms but it now works like a charm.

Thanks again.

formatting zip disk

having read he thread i still have a question:

My zip drive is seen as /dev/sda4 (Libranet decided it, not me). Works fine with v-fat.
Now I'd like to format some of my disks with Linux filesystem. The entry in fstab exists and if necessary I know to edit it it.

My question is this: What should I change in the following instructions, to adapt to my /dev/sda4, and if it is possible to have reiserfs for zipdisks?

Quote:

fdisk /dev/sda

and delete any existing partitions (with the d command). Then create a new partition with the n command, make it primary partition number 1, use w to write the partition table to disk, and quit with q.

Format the partition

mke2fs /dev/sda1

(The 1 is the number that you gave this partition in fdisk).

Your help would be much appreciated
:study:

/dev/sda4? That would mean one zip disk is seen as the fourth partition on /dev/sda...that doesn't seem right. Surely one zip disk should be seen as one whole device?

Okay, I guess that sda4 is weird but then why do you suggest partitioning a zip disk?

Quote:

Format the partition

mke2fs /dev/sda1

(The 1 is the number that you gave this partition in fdisk)

I haven't had a zipdisk in years but couldn't fat or vfat be used in case you need to transfer the disk to a windows machine.

Here's a script I wrote to help me format many zip disks in a short time. Feel free to use and edit it to your needs.

Code:

#! /bin/bash  

# zipformat.sh 

# a quick Zip disk formatting script 

# written by Larry G. Vidrine 8/19/01 

# bigrigdriver1L@netscape.net  

input2=y  # default to format a disk.          

echo; echo          

echo "Press 1 to format ext3,"          

echo          

echo "Press 2 to format ext2,"          

echo          

echo "Press 3 to format fat32."          

echo          

echo "Press 4 to format vfat."          

echo          

echo "Press 5 to exit."          

echo          

read input1          

echo; echo  

while [ "$input2" = y ] # test condition at top of loop 

do          

  case "$input1" in

  "1" )            

  echo "Formatting for Linux ext3..."            

  mkfs -t ext3 -m 1 -b 1024 /dev/sda4              

  ;;        # note double semicolon to terminate            

  "2" )            

  echo "Formatting for Linux ext2..."            

  mkfs -t ext2 -m 1 -b 1024 /dev/sda4            

  ;;            

  "3" )            

  echo "Formatting for Windows fat32..."            

  mkfs -t fat32 -m 1 -b 1024 /dev/sda4            

  ;;            

  "4" )            

  echo "Formatting for Windows vfat..."            

  mkfs -t vfat -m 1 -b 1024 /dev/sda4            

  ;;                

  "5" )                  

  echo "Exiting this script."                  

  exit                  

  ;;          

esac 

                    

 if [ "$input2" = y ]; then      

  echo      

  echo  ">>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>"      

  echo "Press "y" to format another disk, any other key to exit." 

  echo      

  read input2      

  echo                

else          

  exit      

fi  

done  

exit 0

Many thanks for the script -- I'll see if I'm not too dumb to use it!

Boow : of course I also use vfat disks to exchange files with Windows and Mac too but I've noticed all the long file names get shortened -- and .deb file names needs to be whole -- I'd like to be able to copy my deb files in /var/... as I'm going to remove windows from my computer and install linux again (to move it to the beginning of the HDD). then I could use apt-get locally to reinstall all the deb files.

cheers,