SD mass storage: cards vs partitions


Binky

Death's Steed
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I have a card with two partitions on it:

  1. foo (ext3)
  2. BAR_____________ (fat32)
If I use the SD mass storage tool and select BAR, both foo and BAR appear as mass storage devices.

Can both be safely written to from the host machine?

Can I access foo from my pandora while accessing BAR from my desktop?

Is this a feature?

Thanks,

Binky
 
I haven't had much issues with partitioned SD cards with the Pandora, however Windows and partitioned SD cards can be finicky, if not done right it won't show the FAT32 partition at all.
 
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What is 'done right'?

I mainly have the fat32 partition (which is quite small) to avoid conflicts of UID when copying files from my desktop machine.
 
I think the specific partition mass storage mode is for Windows.

As Windows can only access one Partition on SD-cards it's required to select the partition you want to use.

Linux can handle more partitions so every Partition can be used no matter which partition you select to be in mass storage mode.

That's at least my experience with that issue.
 
So it makes the whole card a mass-storage device with the selected partition in a prominent place where windows will notice it?
 
The mass storage mode only works across the whole card. When you mount either of the partitions the Pandora effectively becomes an external hard drive with two partitions. This is also why Windows should not have a problem: it isn't seeing an SD card (which it would not handle two partitions at all), it is seeing an external hard drive which it has no problem handling.

Of course, an EXT3 partition in Windows won't work anyway unless you've got some special software.
 
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