[plug] usb storage howto

[Gavin Chester]

On Sat, 2006-12-02 at 08:18 +0800, Bernd Felsche wrote:
> Gavin Chester <sales at ecosolutions.com.au> writes:
> 
> >Trying to work out how to put files on a SD card fitted into a mp3
> >player.  I have never dealt with these things before and guessed that I
> >had to format it first.  It's a 1GB card and I only have the mp3 player
> >to put it in - no external card reader.
> 
> Cards are formatted when you get them; unless it's off the factory
> floor...

Thanks for clarifying that - overcoming my ignorance :-).

I originally though it might have been unformatted because dmesg showed
HEAPS of buffer I/O error (>50) when the deice was plugged in :-(.  Now
that I've formatted it I only get 1 or 2 buffer I/O errors :-/

-snip-

> Many players will only recognize one sort of filesystem. They're
> quite bigoted.
> 
> On a related matter, i was playing around with a 2GB thumb drive to
> turn it into a magic wand for installation; and ran into the same
> issue with BIOS that can only boot off a FAT16 filesystem on a
> USB-HDD. So I partitioned the stick... with a small FAT16 for boot
> and the other containing the main distribution on a sane filesystem;
> but still haven't managed to iron out the last few wrinkles.
> 
> And just to throw a spanner in the works; some flash drives refuse
> to be partitioned.

Okay, but am I to glean that the 'superfloppy' single, big partition
will work with this device if used mostly for mp3 and maybe for data
transfer once in a while?

I'll get an external card reader, anyway, because this device seems to
operate at usb 1 spec and transfers (if they are happening :-/) seem
woefully slow.

Gavin