Can anyone point me to some documentation about how to install, format etc. an external hard drive with a USB interface?

Also, is there an easy way to find out if a particular HD is supported?

-I'm running Debian Sarge AMD64, and thinking about buying a Buffalo HD-250U2, but want to make sure I can use it!

Thanks!

All these usb-ide disks pretty much just work with the 2.6.* kernels. You can check out the Linux USB FAQ, however.

http://www.linux-usb.org/FAQ.html

Don't you mean HD-HB250U2, though? It is sold on a site like linuxmall. You should not have a problem.

When you plug it in, check to see how it comes up on your desktop. If you don't like the system assigned, non-permanent name (usbdisk, usbdisk-1, and so on), you can give it a label. mkdosfs -n <label> (for FAT32) or mkfs.ext3 -L <label> (for ext3) or something. Check your documentation. Be advised that either of these commands will wipe out any data on your disk, so take care.

I don't know this unit, but it probably comes formatted as a FAT32 disk. Just a guess.

Thanks for the info. Indeed HD-HB250U2 seems to be the device I was talking about (I am in Japan and I suppose they have a different ID number for sales here... there weren't any English pages with the id number HD-250U2.

In fact I read some pages of a consumer review site (kakaku.com) and it seems like that HD is prone to failure within a year in many cases. I have my eye on the Iodata HDC-U250 now.

I didn't find that in the list of supported USB devices indicated in the FAQ you direct me to: http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/devices.php

Hopefully I can just plug it in and partition it with the mkfs command you pointed out.

Thanks!

ps. Any ideas about finding equivalent product id numbers? i.e., I think HDC-U250 is also a Japanese only number.

One idea you might want to consider that has worked well for me is to purchase an IDE internal hard drive from your favorite company along with an external USB enclosure, such as the NexStar from Vantec. Works great, and possibly cheaper. You at least have more control over the hard drive you are getting. Just so you know, it should work with Linux.

Not to meander here, but another problem I ran up against was file size limitations with FAT32. If you are thinking of putting large files, such as tarballs exceeding 4 GB, on your USB drive, make sure the format is not FAT32, which has a file size limitation of 4 or 2 GB. Just thought I'd mention it.

Well, it seems to automount just fine. I formatted two ext3 partitions and one vfat for portability -although apparently there are tools for accessing ext3 filesystems outside of Linux anyway.

I had to change the permissions of the mount point directories so give non-root users r/w access.

I also managed to get encfs running without too much bother. It was a chore to compile the fuse module (needed for encfs) because my kernel was compiled with gcc-3.4 but I had gcc-3.3 installed... I don't really understand how that is supposed to work. I couldn't upgrade to 3.4 without seemingly re-installing a million packages, so I just installed gcc-3.4, redirected the gcc link temporarily, and compiled the fuse module. And Bob's your uncle: encrypted file space.

Thanks for your help Monkster.

Dear all,

I am new to this site. i have a problem in debian. My server was installed with 4 scsi hdd's and one ide dvd-writer. now i want to add one more ide-hdd to that server.
when i add that the grub error stage1.5 is occuring. ide-dvd is connecting to secondary master. now i want to connect the ide to primary master. what is the solution. please tell me. my /boot/grub/menu.lst is following

title Debian GNU/Linux, Kernel 2.6.8-2-686-smp
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.8-2-686-smp root=/dev/sda2 ro
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.8-2-686-smp
savedefault
boot

title Debian GNU/Linux, Kernel 2.6.8-2-686-smp (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.8-2-686-smp root=/dev/sda2 ro single
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.8-2-686-smp
savedefault
boot

waiting for your reply

Raotiru,

I think you should post this query as a new thread because this thread is unlikely to get much attention now.

Sorry, I don't know how to fix your problem!