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Re: [TCLUG:733] IOmega Zip Drives



>There does not seem to be
>a way to perform a LOW-LEVEL format on a zip-disk from Linux.
>It's really not that big a deal - I just do it once in Windoze and
>forget about it. I was just hoping someone else out there had already
>figured this out and knew how to do it in Linux.
>
>


    What I've always done is used /sbin/fdisk to wipe the partition table
and create a new Linux partition on /dev/sdb1 (mainly 'cuz it bugs me that
Zip disks always start on partition 4).  Then do a mkfs.ext2 on the
partition, unmounted.  This has never failed, so far.  However, I couldn't
say for sure if I've ever done it with an NTFS formatted Zip disk, as I
hardly ever format removable media in NTFS -- there's no significant
advantage in using it on a 100MB disk, so far as I can see, and besides, my
NT box seems to revel in setting my Zip disks irreversibly read-only
whenever I ask it to do anything more complex than saving a file.

--
Eric Hillman
UNIX Sysadmin - CCCU
ehillman@cccu.com