Re: tlug-digest V1 #48

[turnbull@example.com (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

>>>>> "Alberto" == A Tomita,Jr <Alberto@example.com> writes:

    Alberto> I'm considering purchasing a removable storage device for
    Alberto> my system by the end of the year. Iomega announced a
    Alberto> 1Gbyte hard-disk cartridge (US$500 for the drive, US$60
    Alberto> for a 540Mb media, US$?? for a 1Gb media), to be put in
    Alberto> the market in the next few months. But this info is from
    Alberto> their press release, and if I find all this to be
    Alberto> vaporware, I intend to go the MO way.

Why are you doing this?  Do you expect to generate that much mountable 
data?  Or are you thinking in terms of quickly restoring archives and
backups?  If the latter, then it's really only useful if there is
similar equipment around.  That's why I went the 230MB MO route; lots
of my colleagues have them, so I can get at my data if *my* machine
craps out.

I doubt the Iomega announcement is vaporware; there are lots and lots
of removeable media out there now.  What I'd really like is a CD-ROM
writer; CD-ROM media are about US$0.50 in quantity, I think.  With
650MB and *really* permanent storage, that would be the ultimate in
archiving.

    Alberto> Well, that was only to introduce my interest in MO disks. 
    Alberto> Now, please, tell me: what's the difference between
    Alberto> mounting a partition from a MO disk and mounting from a
    Alberto> hard-drive? I couldn't get what you mean with configuring
    Alberto> the MO as a hard-drive.

The Fujitsu MO has a hardware jumper marked "MO/HDD".  I would assume
that if you configure the drive as HDD, then you can't take advantage
of the removeable media on the fly---you'd have to reboot.  (Linux
doesn't recognize it in HDD mode, either, unless the media is already
in the drive, as I recall.  I guess I'll reconfigure and reboot later
today to see what happens.)  But if you configure as MO, it looks like
a big floppy.  I haven't yet got around to asking Fujitsu about this.

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Socio-Economic Planning                         Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305 JAPAN                 turnbull@example.com