On Thu, 17 Nov 1994, Rafal Boni wrote:

> In message <9411171651.AA22144@canopus.as.arizona.edu>, you write: 
> 
> -> > Why would you want to use mtools when you can just mount the msdos
> -> > filesystem?
> -> 
> -> Well, I was not the original poster, but I was leery of doing so
> -> because the CAVEATS line on the man page for mount_msdos says:

Well, I am the original poster 8-).

> -> "The msdos filesystem is not known to work reliably with filesystems
> ->  created by versions of MS-DOS later than version 3.3"
> 
> 	I have 3 DOS filesystems created by DOS 5.0 [2 on wd0, 1 on wd1]
> 	and 1 filesystem created by 6.2 [sd0].  Although stuff of the DOS
> 	6.2 filesystem is usually copied DOS->BSD, I have NEVER had a prob.
> 	with using any of the 3 DOS 5.0 filesystems to pass stuff either from

[...]

> 	I know other have had some probs. with MSDOSFS, but it works great
> 	here...

Well, I believe that the MSDOSFS works great for me too, and have 
personally never had a problem with it.  I can do cp, rm, mv, and all 
that stuff with no problem or corruption or whatever.

The great thing about mtools, though, is that I don't have to go through 
the usual mount, read files, umount, new floppy, mount, read files, 
unmount...routine.  I would think most people use mtools for floppy stuff 
rather than hard disk stuff, since it is obviously more efficient to just 
mount the MSDOSFS part of the hard disk at boot time.

Mark Steven de Sagun Tamola
buckwild@u.washington.edu