Creating HFS Disks and Images Under Snow Leopard 10.6 — #7

Post #7 by Gorgonops

Source Forum	68kMLA
Category	Troubleshooting
Post Date	Wed, 16 Sep 2009 - 23:27
Original URL	https://68kmla.org/bb/threads/creating-hfs-disks-and-images-under-snow-leopard-10-6.18580/

Post

Again thanks for your thoughtful input. I am not surprised I do not understand how UNIX hosts work. As I said before, I use Macs so I don't have to. Somebody else works it out for me and it is otherwise transparent to me. Sadly, that becomes a problem when I need something outside the general parameters of Apple and its support communities' focus.

No problem.

For me, trying to wrap my head around UNIX commands is a real headache. However, you are correct, if SheepShaver can directly access the ZIP disk then that would be the best option. Certainly "dd" on a 1.44MB disk is not such a risk or as time consuming, so no real loss there. I will reproduce your efforts with a flash drive using my ZIP disk under Snow Leopard and SheepShaver and see what comes of it.

If you have any trouble figuring it out yourself I can probably help you with a recipe that'll do it. Here's a reader's digest version.

1: Open a Terminal.

2: Plug in your ZIP drive with the disk you want to read inserted. At this point SL will probably mount it read-only. Once you see it in the finder...

3: Enter "diskutil list". The output will look like something like this:

Code:

~$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
  #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
  0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *149.1 Gi   disk0
  1:                        EFI                         200.0 Mi   disk0s1
  2:                  Apple_HFS YayApple               148.7 Gi   disk0s2
/dev/disk2
  #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
  0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *960.0 Mi   disk2
  1:        Apple_partition_map                         31.5 Ki    disk2s1
  2:                  Apple_HFS Woot                    960.0 Mi   disk2s2

In this case, the disk showed up as /dev/disk2. The second partition, named "Woot" in this case, is the one that actually contains the data so if you were to type "mount" you would see something like this:

Code:

/dev/disk2s2 on /Volumes/Woot (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)

Your disk of course might show up as something else. It almost certainly *won't* be /dev/disk0 and it would probably be a Bad Thing to point Sheepshaver at that. Moving on, assuming it came up as disk2...

4: Enter: "diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2" . The mounted volume should disappear from the finder. Verify the device node is still connected by typing "diskutil list" again. Output should look the same as before. At least with my flash drive hitting the "^" icon in the finder "ejected" the disk and destroyed the device node, so don't do that.

5: Start the Sheepsaver GUI. Hit the "add ..." button on the Volumes tab and type "/dev/disk2" as the path. Once done, hit start. With any luck at all when Sheepshaver comes up your drive will appear on the desktop.

When you're done with Sheepshaver, type "diskutil eject /dev/disk2" (or whatever it gets mapped as) before unplugging the Zip. I don't know if that's crucial, but the one page about memory cards suggested that doing so flushes any unwritten buffer. You'll probably want to remove the /dev/ entry from the sheepshaver config when you're not using it, as otherwise it might try mapping, I dunno, your digital camera, into Sheepshaver if you start it with it plugged in.

With any luck, it will yield and easy to setup method for mounting a ZIP disk directly in SheepShaver. Hard drives are less practical because they typically require a SCSI interface on any Mac which would require HFS.

In theory at least you might be able to use this thing to mount a SCSI drive the same way, assuming it works with 10.6. (It does work with 10.5)