[ILUG] Re: Re: Can Linux solve a windows problem?

[Marcus Furlong]

Rick Moen wrote:

> Quoting Marcus Furlong (furlongm at hotmail.com):
> 
>> Yeah, it's using the entire disk rather than partitions, so there is no
>> partition table, but fdisk still tries to read from where it should be.
> 
> Remember how floppy disks inherently didn't have partition tables, while
> hard drives did?  A lot of people seem to have forgotten that
> distinction in the new millennium, which I guess is understandable --
> but the former type of device was carried forward into ATAPI (and thus
> USB and similar flash-memory) devices, as the ATAPI Removable Media
> Device (ARMD) BIOS Specification, written in 1997 by Compaq and Phoenix.
> 
> So, in essence, some flash devices are floppy-like; some are HD-like.
> More at:  http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6867

True, I remember a few ARMD devices that couldn't be partitioned, but it's
been at least a couple of years since I've encountered one (my first 8MB
USB flash device was one until I learnt my first of many
USB-flash-devices-don't-like-the-washing-machine lessons). Most of the more
recent ones tend to be HD-like, but the manufacturers still use the entire
disk and don't use partitions. However they can still be partitioned and
the partitions mounted. The only problem with using partitions is that the
firmware in some mp3 players relies on the fact that there are _not_ any
partitions, so the FAT regions are not where they are expected to be, and
it doesn't find any music.. Which is a pity, I liked the idea of being able
to boot computers with my mp3 player (until it died in a washing
machine... :)