Author Topic: unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box-solved  (Read 10509 times)

Rich442

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unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box-solved
« on: May 02, 2016, 04:22:48 pm »
I have a 4GB usb thumb drive that I use to transfer files (by hand) from my Windows PC to my eCS system. I used the Windows 10 program,

Paragon Partition Manager,

to create two partitions of 2GB each. After assigning the drive letters T: and X:, I formatted each partition with the FAT16.

 the two partitions (on the USB drive) appear in the Drives object as drives T: and X:. eCS has no problems with this device and its filesystem but it only lets me unmount the T: drive (the first partition on the thumb drive). I am not able to unmount the X: partition ( the second partition. When I remove the thumb drive, the computer beeps once and displays the error message, "device not removed properly, data loss may occur" (kind of paraphrasing it).

What can I do to cleanly unmount the USB thumb drive and avoid this error? Is the error a significant one? Thank you all for your comments. :)
« Last Edit: May 04, 2016, 12:02:52 am by Richard Crowley »

ivan

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Re: unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box
« Reply #1 on: May 02, 2016, 04:49:50 pm »
Any particular reason for the two partitions? 

I have an assortment of USB sticks from 4 GB to 32 GB all formatted as FAT32 single partitions, they all work with our OS/2 machines and any windows machine where necessary (they are used to transfer security patches stored on our servers to clients win machines).


Pete

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Re: unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box
« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2016, 05:20:48 pm »
Hi Richard

Do not expect drives partitioned by Windows software to work properly with OS/2 based systems as they rarely do. I am not sure if that is the cause of the problem in this instance but would not rule it out.

If I have this right OS/2 systems "see" a USB Disk as a "container" which may or may not be partitioned - this "container" is specified in config.sys as 1 of the "/REMOVABLES:?" on the USBMSD.ADD line.

What should happen when you attach a usb disk with partitions: All partitions should be displayed in the Drives folder - unless a partition is setup as "Hidden" which x: obviously is not.

To eject the disk: Select 1 of those USB drive partitions, RMB, select Eject disk and *all* partitions on the disk are ejected at the same time - in theory. This is where it seems to go wrong for your system.

If using the latest/last IBM USB drivers I think I would revisit partitioning the disk and use either LVM or DFSee to do the job - but definitely not Windows/*nix/Mac software.

If using later possibly more experimental USB drivers you may want to try the re-partitioning step above before filing a bug report with the USB driver supplier/author.


A possibly silly question: Why partition a 4Gb drive at all? You could share it with Windows/linux/Mac by using the fat32 file system - not the best file system I would agree but usually works OK. You could use DFSee to "volumise" the drive giving it the correct partition type for fat32 before finding the format option and selecting fat32.


Regards

Pete









Lars

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Re: unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box
« Reply #3 on: May 03, 2016, 02:40:00 pm »
May I add something:
I don't know what USB version the OP uses but I am currently working on fixing eject processing in USBMSD.ADD.
In particular, devices with > 1 partition seem to increase problems (but it also happens with large floppy devices or devices that only have 1 partition).
I guess this is due to the fact that there is no proper handshaking between OS2LVM.DMD and USBMSD.ADD of when the device should no longer be accessible (since it has been ejected). It might also be due to the fact that MANY devices (in particular those that do not have removable media like USB sticks and USB hard disks) do not support the LOCK/UNLOCK/EJECT SCSI equivalent commands that USBMSD.ADD uses on bootup (LOCK) and on eject (UNLOCK followed by EJECT).

Wait for version 10.204 ...

Lars

Rich442

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Re: unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box
« Reply #4 on: May 03, 2016, 05:50:22 pm »
Any particular reason for the two partitions? 

My Mac devices cannot read FAT32, NTFS or exFAT. So I partition everything 2GB at a time with FAT16.

I need to use the thumb drive on all of my computers (2 Windows laptops, a Mac Mini 2007, a "white" MacBook mid-2007, and an  x486 IBM workstation running eCS 2.1). The only thing they will all read is "MS-DOS FAT"

Since my Mac devices run Snow Leopard 10.6.8, FAT32 and exFAT are not reliable options. There does not seem to be a problem between eCS and the Windows machines (with the exception of an NTFS partition and/or an HPFS partition) but I use all of my machines to do different things. OS X's "Disk utility" seems to work better (for me) than anything in Windows or Linux). Also, OS X has the Stuffit software which is a brilliant tool, IMO.

Unmounting a CD-ROM and/or a DVD works fine.

ivan

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Re: unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box
« Reply #5 on: May 03, 2016, 11:53:56 pm »
OK, that makes sense.

I think you may need to use DFSee to put the LVM information on the stick and maybe even assign the drive letters, that way when you eject one partition the others are automatically ejected.

As a test I just put a 250 GB hard drive into a USB caddy, used DFSee to make three partitions assign drive letters and LVM information.  I then ejected the unit and plugged it in again, the three partitions were recognised with the assigned drive letters.  Now comes the only difference, only one is a 2 GB partition with the others being 123 GB each (there is a reason for that, this drive will be a copy of one of our workstations).  After formatting the partitions I am able to highlight any one of them in the drives object, click on eject and all three are ejected without problems.

Rich442

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Re: unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box
« Reply #6 on: May 04, 2016, 12:01:29 am »
Thank you all for your comments! :)

ak120

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Re: unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box-solved
« Reply #7 on: May 04, 2016, 01:50:58 pm »
Why not simply using HFS on the USB storage device? Ok, it's limited to 2GB max. file size but partitions can be larger.

Rich442

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Re: unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box-solved
« Reply #8 on: May 09, 2016, 06:29:55 pm »
Why not simply using HFS on the USB storage device? Ok, it's limited to 2GB max. file size but partitions can be larger.

"Snow Leopard" (10.6) does not support HFS or "HFS Plus" anymore. So my choices are limited to FAT16, FAT32 (or, perhaps NTFS 1.0), if I want to  transfer files between Windows 10 (transactional NTFS 3.1) OS X (Mac OS Extended) and OS/2 Warp 3.0 (HPFS and earlier).

I do have an SD card reader on my Windows devices than can read/write exFAT but I don't know if eCS can use that

I hope I'm not making things harder than they are. I just don't know.  :(

Thank you all so much for your comments. :)
« Last Edit: May 09, 2016, 06:47:16 pm by Richard Crowley »

Dave Yeo

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Re: unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box-solved
« Reply #9 on: May 10, 2016, 12:52:10 am »
OS/2 does not currently support exFAT

Alex Taylor

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Re: unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box-solved
« Reply #10 on: May 10, 2016, 07:07:18 am »
To address the original question, the way removable media is implemented on OS/2, unmounting one partition on the device causes all of them to be unmounted.  The message you are getting is from the USB XCenter widget, which I never use and is rather weird in my experience.  I suspect the warning message in this case is bogus.  If you look at your Drives folder after ejecting T:, it's probably that both T: and X: have disappeared.  If that's not the case, then something very odd is happening.

Rich442

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Re: unmount USB drive without "data loss" error box-solved
« Reply #11 on: May 13, 2016, 02:12:33 am »
I suspect the warning message in this case is bogus.  If you look at your Drives folder after ejecting T:, it's probably that both T: and X: have disappeared.  If that's not the case, then something very odd is happening.
I was just wondering if the error was important or trivial. Strangely, on OS I have had to unmount each partition individually.