Lexar Jump Drive & Linux??

Lexar Jump Drive & Linux??

[Hal MacArgle]

Greetings: One year ago I bought a Lexar 256mB Jump Drive; put an
ext2 FS on it and used it to transport small files from one Linux
machine to another, all running 2.4.XX kernels, and mounting the
drive as /dev/sda1, per dmesg...

All of a sudden I couldn't write to it unless the files were less
than 30mB total size.. I figured the drive must be bad; still in
warranty according to Lexar, so I contacted their support people..

First off they say I must reformat the drive using Windows and
included instructions for doing this with Win98SE or XP... SE didn't
even see the drive so I fetched the newest driver from their site and
never did get it to work...

Then I went to an XP machine and was able to format the drive as per
their instructions so it now seems to work fine as long as it's
formatted FAT32  (VFAT)...

Am I presuming I have to _not_ use a Linux FS with this or other jump
or flash drives?? (I do have a UL641 64mB drive that's fine ext2, so
far) I've been telling some that the Lexar 256 drive works with
Linux.. I'll have to retract that unless I can figure out what
happened, eh?? Any comments. TIA.. (Of course the drive 'specs' don't
list Linux, as usual.) :^(

-- 

    Hal - in Terra Alta, WV/US - Slackware GNU/Linux 10.1   (2.4.29)
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Re: Lexar Jump Drive & Linux??

[chuck gelm]

Hi, Hal:

 I have two (128MB) USB (flash,thumb) drives and usually
use them as 'vfat' formatted systems.  They are partially
linux compatible, because 'vfat' does not carry as many
permissions as 'ext2' does.  I'm guessing that all 'full'
linux distributions support 'vfat' file systems by default.
So, these USB drives are basically linux compatible.
I looked in my filesystem list (/usr/src/linux/fs/) and see
over 25 filesystems.  I have even heard of some of them:
cramfs, ext3, fat, jffs, minnix, msdos, ramfs, reiserfs,...

 You could have formatted them 'vfat' with linux.  :-|

Chuck

Hal MacArgle wrote:

>Greetings: One year ago I bought a Lexar 256mB Jump Drive; put an
>ext2 FS on it and used it to transport small files from one Linux
>machine to another, all running 2.4.XX kernels, and mounting the
>drive as /dev/sda1, per dmesg...
>
>All of a sudden I couldn't write to it unless the files were less
>than 30mB total size.. I figured the drive must be bad; still in
>warranty according to Lexar, so I contacted their support people..
>
>First off they say I must reformat the drive using Windows and
>included instructions for doing this with Win98SE or XP... SE didn't
>even see the drive so I fetched the newest driver from their site and
>never did get it to work...
>
>Then I went to an XP machine and was able to format the drive as per
>their instructions so it now seems to work fine as long as it's
>formatted FAT32  (VFAT)...
>
>Am I presuming I have to _not_ use a Linux FS with this or other jump
>or flash drives?? (I do have a UL641 64mB drive that's fine ext2, so
>far) I've been telling some that the Lexar 256 drive works with
>Linux.. I'll have to retract that unless I can figure out what
>happened, eh?? Any comments. TIA.. (Of course the drive 'specs' don't
>list Linux, as usual.) :^(
>
>  
>

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Re: Lexar Jump Drive & Linux??

[Hal MacArgle]

On 03-24, chuck gelm wrote:
> Hi, Hal:
> 
> I have two (128MB) USB (flash,thumb) drives and usually
> use them as 'vfat' formatted systems.  They are partially
> linux compatible, because 'vfat' does not carry as many
> permissions as 'ext2' does.  I'm guessing that all 'full'
> linux distributions support 'vfat' file systems by default.
> So, these USB drives are basically linux compatible.
> I looked in my filesystem list (/usr/src/linux/fs/) and see
> over 25 filesystems.  I have even heard of some of them:
> cramfs, ext3, fat, jffs, minnix, msdos, ramfs, reiserfs,...
> 
> You could have formatted them 'vfat' with linux.  :-|
> 
> Chuck

	I have done that and checked it with dosfsck as AOK..
However, as mentioned, fsck returns an Error 2, but I wont worry
about it for now...

-- 

    Hal - in Terra Alta, WV/US - Slackware GNU/Linux 10.1   (2.4.29)
.
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Re: Lexar Jump Drive & Linux??

[Stephen Samuel]

Hal MacArgle wrote:
> Greetings: One year ago I bought a Lexar 256mB Jump Drive; put an
> ext2 FS on it and used it to transport small files from one Linux
> machine to another, all running 2.4.XX kernels, and mounting the
> drive as /dev/sda1, per dmesg...
>
> All of a sudden I couldn't write to it unless the files were less
> than 30mB total size.. I figured the drive must be bad; still in
> warranty according to Lexar, so I contacted their support people..
>
> First off they say I must reformat the drive using Windows and
> included instructions for doing this with Win98SE or XP... SE didn't
> even see the drive so I fetched the newest driver from their site and
> never did get it to work...
>
> Then I went to an XP machine and was able to format the drive as per
> their instructions so it now seems to work fine as long as it's
> formatted FAT32  (VFAT)...
>
> Am I presuming I have to _not_ use a Linux FS with this or other jump
> or flash drives?? (I do have a UL641 64mB drive that's fine ext2, so
> far) I've been telling some that the Lexar 256 drive works with
> Linux.. I'll have to retract that unless I can figure out what
> happened, eh?? Any comments. TIA.. (Of course the drive 'specs' don't
> list Linux, as usual.) :^(
>   

Shoulda stopped at step 1.. They had it specified as
working with Se. If that didn't work then you could tell
them it was broken and get a replacement.
Now that you have it working with XP, it's a lot harder
to scream at them for having a dead drive.
:-)

Hey, they gave the specs, not me.


If it was working with Linux to begin with, I'd say that
most things were fine... There may have been some
problems with reading/writing certain blocks in the
device. I'd try exercising it with something like the
'badblock' command in Linux.

Did you have any errors associated with the drive in
/var/log/messages?

You can also run the system with heavy debugging...

Presuming it's just a desktop (as opposed to a heavily loaded
server which would produce lots of I/O if you do the following):


echo "*.debug /tmp/debug" >> /etc/syslog.conf

killall -HUP syslogd

That'll have syslog putting lots of stuff in /tmp/debug...
(( Notice the double '>>' on the 'echo' command.. that says
APPEND (as opposed to trashing the whole file )).

then you can go:
tail -f /tmp/debug
and look for any interesting I/O errors or something
else while playing with the drive...

One thing that I'll have to ask (OK: 2)

1) have you always remembered to unmount the device before
pulling it out??
2) did you try doing a full FSCK?

I'd also suggest using ext3fs, which is a good bit more
resilient than ext2fs to having the drive accidently pulled out
without an unmount.

-- 
Stephen Samuel +1(778)861-7641             samnospam@bcgreen.com
		   http://www.bcgreen.com/
   Powerful committed communication. Transformation touching
     the jewel within each person and bringing it to light.

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Re: Lexar Jump Drive & Linux??

[chuck gelm]

Stephen Samuel wrote:

> <snip>


> I'd try exercising it with something like the
> 'badblock' command in Linux.

IIRC, these USB memory drives have a limited number of write cycles.
You may wish to use 'badblocks' in a readonly mode. ;-)

>
<snip>

HTH, Chuck

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Re: Lexar Jump Drive & Linux??

[Hal MacArgle]

On 03-24, Stephen Samuel wrote:
> Hal MacArgle wrote:
> >Greetings: One year ago I bought a Lexar 256mB Jump Drive; put an
> >ext2 FS on it and used it to transport small files from one Linux
> >machine to another, all running 2.4.XX kernels, and mounting the
> >drive as /dev/sda1, per dmesg...
> >
> >All of a sudden I couldn't write to it unless the files were less
> >than 30mB total size.. I figured the drive must be bad; still in
> >warranty according to Lexar, so I contacted their support people..
> >
> >First off they say I must reformat the drive using Windows and
> >included instructions for doing this with Win98SE or XP... SE didn't
> >even see the drive so I fetched the newest driver from their site and
> >never did get it to work...
> >
> >Then I went to an XP machine and was able to format the drive as per
> >their instructions so it now seems to work fine as long as it's
> >formatted FAT32  (VFAT)...
> >
> >Am I presuming I have to _not_ use a Linux FS with this or other jump
> >or flash drives?? (I do have a UL641 64mB drive that's fine ext2, so
> >far) I've been telling some that the Lexar 256 drive works with
> >Linux.. I'll have to retract that unless I can figure out what
> >happened, eh?? Any comments. TIA.. (Of course the drive 'specs' don't
> >list Linux, as usual.) :^(
> >  
> 
> Shoulda stopped at step 1.. They had it specified as
> working with Se. If that didn't work then you could tell
> them it was broken and get a replacement.
> Now that you have it working with XP, it's a lot harder
> to scream at them for having a dead drive.
> :-)
> 
> Hey, they gave the specs, not me.

	Some day "they'll" admit that there are "other" O/S's out
there, eh??

	One of my paranoid problems is that I can't get Win98SE to
work with any flash/jump drive, only an USB mouse, even with the
driver supplied by Lexar's site, trying on three different machines..




> If it was working with Linux to begin with, I'd say that
> most things were fine... There may have been some
> problems with reading/writing certain blocks in the
> device. I'd try exercising it with something like the
> 'badblock' command in Linux.

	Now that I have it reformatted as vfat, 'dosfsck' gives it a
clean bill of health; giving more details than badblocks of course..
I find the drive I have is USB 1.0, so it's not up to speed so to
speak, eh?



> Did you have any errors associated with the drive in
> /var/log/messages?
> 
> You can also run the system with heavy debugging...
> 
> Presuming it's just a desktop (as opposed to a heavily loaded
> server which would produce lots of I/O if you do the following):

	Yes a simple desktop, a machine that can be connected to wide
band for faster downloads than our rural home machines using antique
twisted pairs, lucky to get 3.0kBps.. I admit I cried wolf before
putting my brain in motion and didn't troubleshoot properly..

<snip>




> One thing that I'll have to ask (OK: 2)
> 
> 1) have you always remembered to unmount the device before
> pulling it out??
> 2) did you try doing a full FSCK?

	Running Unix for years now I hope I know about umount but
have to be honest that we sometimes "forget," eh?? Am, really, not
sure of the complete details.. In the heat of "battle" I flipped and
didn't do many things I should have.. At least all is well now with
the vfat format.. I hope it's not an intermittent thingy.. Oh well..




> I'd also suggest using ext3fs, which is a good bit more
> resilient than ext2fs to having the drive accidently pulled out
> without an unmount.

	Everything I have here is ext3 but I used ext2 on that drive
because I didn't want to rock the boat away from a device that's
marked "Windoze" only... <grin> I'll keep it vfat and be done with
it, as all suggested.. Believe it or not I've actually talked to some
hardware vendors who haven't even "heard" of Linux... Ugh..

	Lexar support has been excellent otherwise with, actually,
too many messages, but they seem to want to try as long as I don't
mention Linux (maybe.) Wonder if they'll talk to me as to why I can't
get Win98SE to work with either flash/jump drive I have?? Lexar
support answers eMails within hours instead of the normal days of
others, if at all...

	Appreciate all!!

-- 

    Hal - in Terra Alta, WV/US - Slackware GNU/Linux 10.1   (2.4.29)
.
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Re: Lexar Jump Drive & Linux??

[Hal MacArgle]

On 03-24, David Fierbaugh wrote:
> I second what has been said about using them with vfat file system. I have a 
> 16Mb that must be at least 4 1/2 years old. It's still going fine.
> 
> Most people keep these as vfat, unless there's a really god reason not to 
> (like using with NSLU2 hacked to run off a flash drive, now that's fun.)
> 
> Flash drives are EXTRAORDINARILY resilient. I've seen photos off of a flash 
> card from a camera which was caught (and destroyed) in an explosion.
> 
> I've seen them destroyed by fluid, but the most common cause of failure is 
> good old file system corruption from miscellaneous cause or human error.
> 
> I'd suggest formating it as vfat, and take a look at it with fsck.vfat or 
> badblocks.

	Thanks all for your input.. Consensus is to use it vfat to
stay out of trouble with Lexar.. <grin> It seems to be AOK now except
that fsck.vfat returns an Error 2, but 'dosfsck -tvr /dev/sda1' gives
it a clean bill of health.. I didn't try badblocks, but set it up as
Dos drive F: so we're in business again till the next crisis... 

-- 

    Hal - in Terra Alta, WV/US - Slackware GNU/Linux 10.1   (2.4.29)
.
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