# Zip drive errors

## milothurston

I keep seeing this in the logs, referring to my zip drive (it's a 250MB internal, /dev/sda4):

```

Sep  7 13:48:11 bioinf1 kernel: Device not ready.  Make sure there is a disc in the drive.

Sep  7 13:48:11 bioinf1 kernel: sda : READ CAPACITY failed.

Sep  7 13:48:11 bioinf1 kernel: sda : status = 0, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 28 

Sep  7 13:48:11 bioinf1 kernel: Current sd00:00: sense key Not Ready

Sep  7 13:48:11 bioinf1 kernel: Additional sense indicates Medium not present

Sep  7 13:48:11 bioinf1 kernel: sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.  

Sep  7 13:48:11 bioinf1 kernel:  /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0

Sep  7 13:48:11 bioinf1 kernel:  I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0

```

Strangely, this keeps happening every few hours even though I am not accessing or using the zip disk.

Does anyone know why?

Thanks,

Milo.

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## pilla

Strange... are you using SCSI emulation on that? I thought these zip drives were IDE (at least, the internal ones).

 *milothurston wrote:*   

> I keep seeing this in the logs, referring to my zip drive (it's a 250MB internal, /dev/sda4):
> 
> ```
> 
> Sep  7 13:48:11 bioinf1 kernel: Device not ready.  Make sure there is a disc in the drive.
> ...

 

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## milothurston

[quote]

Strange... are you using SCSI emulation on that? I thought these zip drives were IDE (at least, the internal ones).

[/quote]

I am using SCSI emulation on both the zip drive and the CD-RW. The zip drive seems to be working perfectly, other than those odd messages.

I'll try it with scsi emulation turned off, to see what happens.

Milo.

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## pilla

Do you have any special reason to use SCSI emulation on ZIP?

 *milothurston wrote:*   

>  *Quote:*   
> 
> Strange... are you using SCSI emulation on that? I thought these zip drives were IDE (at least, the internal ones).
> 
>  
> ...

 

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## milothurston

[quote]   Do you have any special reason to use SCSI emulation on ZIP? [/quote]

No.

I'm not sure why I set it up, but it does work :-)

I will try it without the scsi emulation.

Milo.

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## milothurston

After further investigation, it seems that the internal zip will only work with SCSI emulation. Perhaps this is because it is on the scondary slave channel, and the primary slave is a CD-RW using such emulation.

Anyway, the errors still appear in the log if no disk is present. It would be good to know why, if anyone has the answer.

Thanks,

Milo.

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## pilla

That's strange. Are you sure you booted without the hdX=ide-scsi option ?

 *milothurston wrote:*   

> After further investigation, it seems that the internal zip will only work with SCSI emulation. Perhaps this is because it is on the scondary slave channel, and the primary slave is a CD-RW using such emulation.
> 
> Anyway, the errors still appear in the log if no disk is present. It would be good to know why, if anyone has the answer.
> 
> Thanks,
> ...

 

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## milothurston

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
>    That's strange. Are you sure you booted without the hdX=ide-scsi option ? 
> 
> 

 

The boot command line was:

```
root=/dev/hda2 hdc=ide-scsi mem=2048M

```

hdc will be the CD-RW (secondary master) and therefore the Zip should be hdd. However, /dev/hdd4 does not exist. /dev/sda4 does, and points to  scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part4.

Thanks,

Milo.

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## pilla

I wouldn't think this was the expected behaviour... using ide-scsi in one disk affects all disks in the same IDE? Wow. 

Could you boot without hdc=ide-scsi, just to satisfy my curiosity (of course, if it is not a pain for you)? 

 *milothurston wrote:*   

>  *Quote:*   
> 
>    That's strange. Are you sure you booted without the hdX=ide-scsi option ? 
> 
>  
> ...

 

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## milothurston

 *Quote:*   

>    I wouldn't think this was the expected behaviour... using ide-scsi in one disk affects all disks in the same IDE? Wow. 
> 
> 

 

Nor would I, but I couldn't think of anything else.

Anyway, booting without any hdX=ide-scsi options causes the CD-RW to be recognised as an IDE rather than a SCSI disk, whilst the zip remains SCSI!

Milo.

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## pilla

Well, now it is looking like a bug.... maybe you should feel a bug report. 

 *milothurston wrote:*   

>  *Quote:*      I wouldn't think this was the expected behaviour... using ide-scsi in one disk affects all disks in the same IDE? Wow. 
> 
>  
> 
> Nor would I, but I couldn't think of anything else.
> ...

 

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