[FF103]

Yes I did run across that info about the scsi device in some of my searching,but,here is the lilo confg file and it apperrs to recognize it as scsi.
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi sda4=ide-scsi acpi=ht quiet"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi sda4=ide-scsi acpi=ht"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=nomount hdc=ide-scsi sda4=ide-scsi acpi=ht failsafe"
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe
I also read on some searches that linux changes it from hdd to sda4 when it recoginizes it as atapi . And everything that I have found to check on the system says that its there right where it's supposed to be. I'll try to mount it as hdd as you suggested, I don't remember if I've tried that before or not. Thanks for you help.

[FF103]

Well this blasted *#$%!!* zip drive is finally working. I ended up getting it to mount manually by using /dev/sda/ /mnt/zip ,notice that the 4 is missing from sda4. Even tho mandrake insists on calling it sda4, it would not mount it as such,heck,it even denined it existed. Any way, after I was able to get it to mount manually I changed the fstab to read /dev/sda and everything is working. Thanks for everyones help. And codejockey, we agreed it would be something simple when I found it. That little number 4 ran me in circles for a month!!. Thanks again everyone for all the help.

[lynch]

[codejockey]

Wow! -- great work sorting this out! -- I am amazed, however, that this turned out to be the problem, since what it suggests is that the drive has no partition information (the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. in the /dev/sda* refer to partitions on the drive) and is being mounted as a "raw" device. Usually, attempting to mount a "raw" device is an error; in this case, though, it (apparently) was exactly what you needed to do. Perhaps the clue is in the lilo.conf file in the line that includes sda4=ide-scsi; what this essentialy says is to treat partition 4 on SCSI device a as a separate SCSI device. In effect, this directive maps a partition to a device -- wow!

Thanks for posting this info -- this is incredibly valuable.

[FF103]

I don't remember if I posted this in an eairlier post codejockey, but I was able to mount the drive manually as sda4 but it would only display 1(one) file on the disk ,whick I'm assuming might have been on partition 4? is that possible?

[codejockey]

This is a really interesting question. Since I don't have one of these beasts, I can't experiment, but I'd sure be interested to see the output of fdisk -l /dev/sda on your system (if you're willing -- feel free to take it offline via email or PM if you'd rather).

[FF103]

Don't have a clue what all this means codejockey,but here it is.

[root@localhost ray]# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 100 MB, 100646912 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 95 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 ? 937477 1203315 272218546+ 20 Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(356, 97, 46) logical=(937476, 3, 15)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(357, 116, 40) logical=(1203314, 30, 19)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary:
/dev/sda2 ? 649505 912677 269488144 6b Unknown
Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(288, 110, 57) logical=(649504, 0, 11)
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(269, 101, 57) logical=(912676, 1, 10)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary:
/dev/sda3 ? 263179 945973 699181456 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux3
Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(345, 32, 19) logical=(263178, 26, 16)
Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(324, 77, 19) logical=(945972, 51, 15)
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary:
/dev/sda4 * 680971 680981 10668+ 49 Unknown
Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(87, 1, 0) logical=(680970, 34, 16)
Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(335, 78, 2) logical=(680980, 61, 8)
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary:

Partition table entries are not in disk order
[root@localhost ray]#

I hope all this helps someone else that has had as much trouble as I have.

[codejockey]

Thanks for posting this info -- it may very well help out someone else who ends up facing the problems you've already solved. I haven't had a chance to look over the fdisk -l listing carefully, but I certainly appreciate your efforts to collect and post the data.