Weird IOmega eGo issue

Niftyprose

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Hello guys, first post here in ages. I'm afraid it's not a deep, thoughtful, lucid query on our favourite OS. But it's possible that someone out there has encountered this ?manufacturer-specific issue...

I'm running SparkyLinux on my laptop and the excellent (if obscure) VolksPC on a repurposed TV box. Have the usual tools like fdisk and GParted; have formatted lots of hard disks on lots of platforms.

I'm trying to reformat a 500Gb IOmega eGo I've acquired. It happens that I want VFAT, which is not my favourite file system but there.

The first indication that things are amiss is that, when connected, the eGo shows up in the file manager as two disks, one of which is a virtual 'IOmega_CD' with a windows 'encryption utility' executable. (The other is the hard disk.)

fdisk shows only one hard disk at /dev/sda1

Standard attempts at formatting via fdisk/mkfs and gparted seem to work, but the virtual CD remains and the 500Gb of pristine disk space can't be written to.

I'm fairly certain that some WIndows wrinkle is preventing the formatting tools working properly, but I might be missing something really obvious.

TIA, NP
 


Setting a new partition-table may help. Use gparted for this. Drive -> new partition-table -> gpt.
 
Nah, I tried the obvious stuff already. (Thanks, Peer, but...)

I saw something similar to the IOmega setup years ago, when I was using an Asus eeePC. The builders had partitioned the 20Gb SSD drive in such a way that you couldn't repartition it so as to gain access to a 4Gb section they'd reserved for their own purposes. I never figured out how they did it, but I figure the IOmega must be accessible by some means...

Best, NP.
 
One thing to try is DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke). This will attempt to wipe the drive before any operating system loads as it runs from the Live CD.
This may erase any software preventing the formatting.
 

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