Re: ewf flash partitioning

From: Matt Sullivan (matt.sullivan_at_leica-geosystems.com)
Date: 09/29/04 

Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 13:34:54 +1000

Thanks for the help, however I'm still a little confused and I think I may
have lead you slightly astray.

I am using PCMCIA ATA flash cards, not CF although I understand they're the
same electrical interface. My target hardware is a JLT8401 single board
computer with two pcmcia slots, no floppy or hdd support (
www.jltmobilecomputers.com .) I only use a usb reader because it's
convenient on my desktop pc. I've also tried partitioning in a couple of
different laptops with the same results.

The only thing that I have noticed different with my new SanDisk card is in
windows under the 'Volumes' tab of the disk properties the 'Partition Style'
is 'Master Boot Record' compared to 'Not Applicable' for the previous
devices I have tried.

What defines whether True IDE mode is used? Do I physically need an adapter
from PCMCIA to IDE, or will it work through the CardBus controller in a
laptop and the cirrus logic PCMCIA controller in the JLT computer?

I have found through experimentation that a windows 2000 laptop will allow
me to delete then existing partition, then create a new partition on this
disk, however it forces the first partition you create to be the size of the
entire disk.

I have in previously created multiple partitions under linux, however I
found that my windows systems (laptops and target xpe device) would only
recognise and use the first partition. Do you think I would have more
success with the latest SanDisk card?

There's one other piece of info that may or may not be relevant: The bios of
the JLT computer ("Insyde software version 1.01 (3.05-25)") detects a pcmcia
flash card in the first slot as the primary master. However a card in the
second slot is not detected by the bios. I'm not sure if this implies that
the first card at least is using "True IDE" mode? Or is this some
proprietary bios feature to support booting from pcmcia? (The bios also
supports the systemsoft cardboot functionality, however the bios detection -
and indeed booting from flash cards - works regardless of whether this is
enabled.)

Once again, thanks for the help,
Matt

"Günter Wirth" <g.wirth_nospam@extec.de> wrote in message
news:OWErc4SpEHA.2588@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> Hi,
>
> In True IDE mode, the product reports 044Ah indicating the drive is not
> removable (see data***).
>
> To use Windows tools the removable flag must be deleted, otherwise it is
> not
> possible to create partitions on the device.
>
> You have to connect the CF over a adaptor directly to the IDE bus. If you
> use a USB reader the device is still removable.
>
> With Linux tools it's possible to create partitions with the removable
> flag.
>
> Regards,
> Günter
>
>
> "Matt Sullivan" <matt.sullivan@leica-geosystems.com> schrieb im
> Newsbeitrag
> news:e%23t9XFSpEHA.3428@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
>> After much searching I finally sourced a SanDisk pcmcia flash card
>> (SDP3BI-256-201-80) that is apparently meant to be configured as a fixed
>> disk by default. I was quite dissapointed to find that when I put it in
>> my
>> desktop xp machine it still appears as a removable disk. (And I can't
> create
>> multiple partitions for use with EWF.)
>>
>> I've also tried 'ATCFWCHG /P /F' after booting into dos from the card
>> itself. The utility says 'pass', but the result under xp is the same.
>>
>> Is there something I'm missing here? Do I need to do the partitioning
>> from
>> within an XPe environment?
>> (I don't see why it would be any different, however I've got no other
> ideas
>> of what could be wrong.)
>>
>> BTW: How is this normally handled in a production environment? It seems
> like
>> a kludge to have to manually partition, possibly run bootprep and then
> copy
>> the image. Can anyone recommend software to create/copy an entire disk
> image
>> to a pcmcia card under xp? (Preferably through a usb card reader, but I'd
>> settle for laptop pcmcia support.)
>>
>>
>
>