partitioning fat32+ext2/3

[rubberglove]

Hi Everyone --

After purchasing an acer aspire one 'netbook', I'm bringing my neglected H140 out of retirement to use (mostly) as an external hard drive, once my replacement battery arrives.

While I know (and understand why) rockbox only supports fat32, I'd like to be able to store 4gb + files on there (virtual machine images, mostly), and don't mind losing some space to the rockbox partition. I'd like to know if there are any problems with splitting the drive in two partitions: one fat32 and the other ext2 or ext3

Will rockbox just ignore the ext partition?
I assume both partitions will show up to the attached system, as the USB connection and file operations are handled by an onboard usb chip, and outside of rockbox -- is that correct?

Finally, is there a specific partitioning scheme that rockbox will need in order to find/boot from the fat32 partition?

Sorry if this info is available somewhere, I tried searching around, but didn't seem to find anything.

Thanks a bunch,

ps - This is my first post here in at least a year or two (or more!?) since the battery on my H140 crapped out and I started using a (sadly) non-rockbox-able nano, but I'm glad to see that rockbox is still growing and moving forward.

[AlexP]

Yep, that should be fine, as I understand it Rockbox will just try to mount the first FAT partition it finds.

Again as I understand it for USB on the H100, Rockbox essentially just hands over control to the hardware USB bridge, so I think it should be OK.

[bluebrother]

Will rockbox just ignore the ext partition?

yes.

I assume both partitions will show up to the attached system, as the USB connection and file operations are handled by an onboard usb chip, and outside of rockbox -- is that correct?

if the OS on the PC does support the partition formats, yes.

Finally, is there a specific partitioning scheme that rockbox will need in order to find/boot from the fat32 partition?

No. Rockbox simply looks for the first primary FAT32 partition.

But keep in mind that the hard disk on the h100 is rather slow, so storing large VM files on it might be a tendious thing and not worth the copying time, given how cheap external hard drives are these days.

[rubberglove]

Thanks to you both for such quick replies -- exactly what I was hoping to hear.

The hard drive is fairly slow, but it's still faster than the internal solid-state disk in the laptop (sigh).
I'm going to be actually running the VMs off the H140 -- I've tried it out with a vmware image (split into 2GB chunks), and it was actually fairly snappy... or, at least snappy enough for my needs.

I do have an extra external drive or two lying around here, but I like the size of the H140 and the fact that it's battery powered, so it's portable, but doesn't run off USB power (which would shorten the running time of the laptop).

Plus, it has the advantage that it runs rockbox, so I can use it as a (still) pretty kick-ass mp3 player.

thanks again.

[AlexP]

You know, it almost feels like sacrilege using a H140 like that!  I still rate it as one of the best players produced - line in/out, optical in/out, recording, FM, ...

[rubberglove]

You know, it almost feels like sacrilege using a H140 like that!  I still rate it as one of the best players produced - line in/out, optical in/out, recording, FM, ...

Heh -- in some ways I agree, but this particular H140 has seen better days...

• The current battery won't even power the device on anymore (I'm waiting for a new battery from ebay)
• the headphone jack is perpetually loose (I've opened the case and squeezed the contacts together I don't know how many times)
• the line out is distorted (bad/dead amplifier chip, I guess?)

...but, I can't complain. I certainly used and abused the thing long enough - I had rockbox on there since before it could even play music ;-)