Partitions Won't Mount

jeff deveraux

Hey all-

I have a hard drive that has 10 partitions on it. Each partition was installed on the drive using the exact same method and hardware. Quite often when I mount the drive only 4 of the 10 partitions mount on the desktop. The strange thing is that all 10 partitions will be found in disk utility.

My not so quick fix has been to eject the drive and reboot the computer. This will get all 10 partitions to mount on the desktop, but only 7 of them will show up in the finder. This is important as I have software that uses the finder to locate files specific to these partitions.



Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

marvin

If you select the partitions in Disk Utility, you should get an option to mount them from there.



I'm curious why you have 10 partitions. The most I've ever felt any use for is 3 at a given time. With boot-camp, I could see use for 3 again but 10??



I'm not sure why it won't mount them all at startup though. Possibly something needs modified in the /etc/rc startup script or you could put a script in your startup folder. Since Disk Utility will do it easily, you're probably best just using that.

jeff deveraux

Thanks for your time Marvin



I tried to mount them in Disk Utility. It didn't work.



The reason I have 10 partitions is because I own a Panasonic HVX-200 video camera. This camera records the footage onto a solid state media card called a P2 card. The card is basically composed of 4 SD cards stuffed into a PCMCIA card in a RAID. One of the options for offloading media to a hard drive is to plug an external HDD into the camera via firewire. In this process the camera's onboard computer creates a partition each time a card is transfered to the HDD. I don't always have 10 partitions per say. I could have as many as 15.

formerlurker

Sorry to say I've got no ideas for a solution. I can't help observing, though, that Panasonic is using a really, really, REALLY ugly technique for that camera.

jeff deveraux

Quote:

Originally Posted by FormerLurker


Sorry to say I've got no ideas for a solution. I can't help observing, though, that Panasonic is using a really, really, REALLY ugly technique for that camera.

The method for offloading footage I mentioned is not the only method. It's just the one that works for what I do. I;m curious why you think it's so ugly.

formerlurker

Creating a new partition every time a drive is hooked up is one of the ugliest technology "solutions" I've ever heard of.



I'm not surprised you're having problems with so many partitions, especially ones which are created by what seems to be a very poorly engineered program.



If they're concerned about overwriting existing media on the drive, the system should just create a new media folder with a different name.



As far as a workaround solution to Panasonic's horrid engineering - I would reformat the drive every time you offload the footage, so you are only dealing wth a few partitions at a time, instead of 10 or 15.

marvin

Ah, it seems that the cards are formatting up to 15 fat32 partiitons on the external firewire hard drive:



http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=69231



One limitation I've read of fat32 is that it only supports files up to 4GB.



I'm surprised that Disk Utility doesn't mount the partitions if it sees them. I presume they are showing up as greyed out and when you select them, the mount button appears up top and clicking it does nothing?



You can try using the command line method. Open the terminal in /Applications/Utilities. Then type in df and hit return. This will list the devices. Then choose the partition you can't see and note down the ID, something like /dev/disk2s3. Then type hdiutil mountvol /dev/disk2s3 and hit return.

jeff deveraux

Thanks again Marvin. You're very helpful and I appreciate it. Unfortunately, my problem at this time is that all ten partitions show up as mounted in disk utility, on the desktop, and in the terminal; but only 7 show up in finder. The software I am using relies on finder to access the folders on the partitions. I could simply transfer the folders out of the partitions to another drive, but this is a workflow I would have to use too often. I don't want to transfer footage every time.



Any thoughts?

marvin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeff Deveraux


my problem at this time is that all ten partitions show up as mounted in disk utility, on the desktop, and in the terminal; but only 7 show up in finder.

Have you tried relaunching the Finder after mounting? You hold alt then right click the Finder icon and choose relauch. Or you can do command-alt-escape and relaunch from there.



Also check to see if the drives are appearing in /Volumes. If you use the go menu in the Finder, choose go to folder and type /Volumes.

lundy

Yeah - let's see what is in the /Volumes directory. If it shows all the partitions, then a simple AppleScript can be tried to loop through them and mount them.

jeff deveraux

I needed the drive for field work so I had to dump the files from the partitions to another dive. Then i reformatted the drive. When I get new partitions on the drive, I'll try your suggestions and report back. It may be a while though. Thanks again.