[NTLUG:Discuss] External Hard Drive Recommendation

[Joel Sinor]

On Tue, 06 May 2003 14:38:13 -0500
Steve Baker <sjbaker1 at airmail.net> wrote:

<snip>
> The only odd thing we've encountered is that when you plug a specific
> memory stick into your PC, it is assigned a drive descriptor
> (/dev/something-or-other) and if you unplug it and plug in a DIFFERENT
> memory stick (same manufacturer, etc), it allocated it a new drive
> name.  Hence, if dozens of people in your workplace have these things
> and they all plug them into the same PC at one time or another, it's
> likely that you'll run out of drive names or something.
<snip>
I have encountered something similar with my usb mouse, but it seems to
oscillate between /dev/input/mouse0 and /dev/input/mouse1 (if I unplug
it and plug it back into the same port again). I bet what is happening
is that the driver increments the node name each time a device is
inserted, and if it runs out of nodenames it starts over at the first
currently unused nodename. So you probbaly won't run out of names unless
you have lots of ports, and you can always make more nodes.
I had also theorized this is happening to me because I compiled
everything into the kernel (I am not loading modules for anything).  I
think if you had a module for the usb drivers they could be unloaded
when you unplug something and then reloaded when you plug it in, and in
that case they would essentially retain the same nodename (unless you
plugged in something else of the same type in the interim), but I have
not tested this yet...