--- In os2hardware{at}yahoogroups.com, "jmurthy"  wrote:
> 
> I just bought a Transcend 256 MB USB memory stick and have some basic
> questions about USB and the drive.
> 
> 1) My Config.Sys USB statements are as follows:
> BASEDEV=USBMSD.ADD /FLOPPIES:0 /REMOVABLES:1 /V
> BASEDEV=USBEHCD.SYS /V
> BASEDEV=USBUHCD.SYS /V
> BASEDEV=USBD.SYS
> BASEDEV=USBHID.SYS
> This gives me an E and an F drive which I can't seem to do anything
> with. When I plug in my pen drive, I get an H drive (G is attached by
> NDFS). What are the E and F drives?
> 
> 2) When I plug in the pen drive, I get a popup saying H drive attached
> and when I pull it out I get another popup saying that it is has been
> disconnected and loss of data may result. How do I stop the USB drive
> to pull out the drive?
> 
> 3) When I formatted the drive under XP, I had the choice of formatting
> as FAT or FAT32. It seemed to me that FAT was better because the FAT32
> driver requires the drive to be plugged in at bootup. Is that correct

This is incorrect.  The latest IBM USB (10.145) drivers work fine
without having the USB devices plugged in on bootup.  I have numerous
USB  devices that I plug and unplugged all the time when in eComStation.

The present FAT32 driver (0.99) does support removable media. 
However, it has one small bug.  When the media is ejected, the drive
is left with a dirty flag.  However, if you use USBMON, this problem
does not occur. Why, I don't know.  There is a beta version of the
FAT32.IFS found in the Yahoo FAT32USER groups File section which
corrects this problem.  With this driver, FAT32 works great with
removable media.

There is one thing that one should be concerned about.  The OS2 FAT32
chkdsk is limited in what it can fix.  Sometimes Windows scandisk is
needed.  However, I have found the WinXP's scandisk has a bug.  It
does not fix mismatched FATs.  In fact, XP's scandisk does not see a
problem.  With Windows ME's scandisk, I had no problem fixing this
problem.  This is based on my own previous experiences.  However, it
hasn't prevented me from using FAT32.

Mismatched FATs can occur when the removable media is not ejected
properly. If scandisk can't fix it, then the volume must be formatted
again causing one to lost most of their data. In OS/2 and eCS, the
media must be "ejected" using the drive objects or a file manager.


> and is my only choice FAT if I want to transfer files to Windows
> systems? I don't care that much because I can always go to 8 + 3 if I
> need to or use zip files.
> 
> 4) I'll be a getting a 200 GB Seagate soon and I assume the same
> applies. I'll be using it largely for backups but I need to ensure
> that it will be readable by Windows/Linux systems. Can I make it JFS?

Windows has no JFS file system driver that I know of.  So this cannot
be used.  FAT32 can be used on such a large drive, but the OS/2 driver
is slower reading the FAT32 volume than Windows.  Again, remember the
problem if the FAT32 drive is not ejected problem under OS/2 or eCS.

David
 






 
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