Having a hard time making linux recognizing my new external hard drive
 

I just got a My book studio edition II 2tb and linux won't recognize the hard drive. the cd to configer it, only for mac and pc.

Your system should automatically recognize it when you plug in the drive..

with the drive plugged in open a shell and as root try the following commands
tail /var/log/messages
fdisk -l

The first one should show if/how the drive was detected, and what Device ID it was assigned.
The second command will show what drives/partitions your system can see.
Post the output here so we can help you further


also what distro are you running ?
(you should update your profile to include your distro, or specifically mention it in any question you post. Thanks !!)


Welcome to Linuxquestions.org :)

this is the first command but the other did nothing.(I also might add my brother added linux os to my computer, so I when it comes to commands i'm a bit of a dunce when it come's to that)




Mar 16 13:33:32 jared-desktop kernel: [ 4726.499056] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Mar 16 13:33:32 jared-desktop kernel: [ 4726.502545] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdb] Cache data unavailable
Mar 16 13:33:44 jared-desktop kernel: [ 4726.502565] sdb: [mac] sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 sdb4
Mar 16 13:33:44 jared-desktop kernel: [ 4739.000277] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
Mar 16 13:33:44 jared-desktop kernel: [ 4739.000353] sd 12:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
Mar 16 13:33:44 jared-desktop kernel: [ 4739.006927] scsi13 : SBP-2 IEEE-1394
Mar 16 13:33:45 jared-desktop kernel: [ 4740.022112] ieee1394: sbp2: Logged into SBP-2 device
Mar 16 13:33:45 jared-desktop kernel: [ 4740.024223] ieee1394: sbp2: Node 0-00:1023: Max speed [S400] - Max payload [2048]
Mar 16 13:33:45 jared-desktop kernel: [ 4740.038590] scsi 13:0:1:0: Enclosure WD My Book Device 1010 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
Mar 16 13:33:45 jared-desktop kernel: [ 4740.038756] scsi 13:0:1:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 13

just got it


Usage: fdisk [-l] [-b SSZ] [-u] device
E.g.: fdisk /dev/hda (for the first IDE disk)
or: fdisk /dev/sdc (for the third SCSI disk)
or: fdisk /dev/eda (for the first PS/2 ESDI drive)
or: fdisk /dev/rd/c0d0 or: fdisk /dev/ida/c0d0 (for RAID devices)

second one should be fdisk -(lowercase L)

Looks like the drive is identified as /dev/sdb

Are there any partitions on teh device yet ? (four possibly ?)
if so do you know what filesystem they are using (FAT32, NTFS, EXT4, etc..) ?

jared nelson do you have any idea what distro your brother installed
Ubuntu,fedora,slackware, something else

depending on what is installed ( all the major distros include "ntfs-3g" ) a MS Windows formated "ntfs" drive should be auto detected and auto mounted
and mounted in one of a few places
in
/mnt/someName
/media/someName

Its ubuntu.

So i was thinking that all I have to do is pluge it in to a another computer and configer it so that linux can recognize it.(this is what my brother had to do when he gave me his la cie, he restored it and made it a open drive, because it configured for his mac).On the box it said that it can work for mac and pc, so that could possibly mean that it has a preexisting os that confects with linux. this is what I'm thinking anyway

so it is a brand new, never used, external ( usb) harddrive ? -- not new - i answered my question
but is it a usb or internal drive

if is it a regular hard drive that you need to plug in to the , inside the computer .
if inside the computer -- did you change the pin setting from master to slave on the new drive ?

the windows tools on that cd will not work for linux ( Ubuntu )
the built in ones should do the job
but you might need to download the " gparted - live cd"
to format the drive to "ext3" format
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

so it was reformated to the hfs ( mac) format - Ubuntu should be able to read it and there should be a icon for it on your desktop.
-------------
and from this it looks like it is being seen by Ubuntu
" Mar 16 13:33:44 jared-desktop kernel: [ 4726.502565] sdb: [mac] sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 sdb4 "
and it has 4 partitions on it


with the drive pluged in the output of
would help

He's connecting via firewire rather than USB if I'm reading the message log correctly, not that it makes any difference. I have a drive that connects eitehr way and it comes up the same, regardless of wether I am using USB or Firewire.

I'm still waiting for the fdisk -l output as well..
I believe it's just not mounting because of the file system type.. but verification would be nice.

if it is mac formatted, as we believe, and you want to access data on it, then:

sudo apt-get install hfsutils

http://fosswire.com/post/2007/9/deal...ives-on-linux/

Its a never been used externel hard drive that has 800 fire wire to 400 fire wire and usb 2.0.
When i do the command fdisk -l it just restarts the root command and acts as if i didn't do anything.I consulted my brother and he said it could be a driver problem, because it is a new hardware.
And now that i'm thinking about it the cd it comes with, is a driver download

Like so
jared@jared-desktop:~$ fdisk -l
jared@jared-desktop:~$

Are you using fdisk -l (lower case L) not fdisk -1 (one) or anything else, just like farslayer said? Crazy fonts make it impossible to tell. Your post listing:

Also makes it look like a mac formatted hd with four partitions, so I'd agree with farslayer's advice:

sudo apt-get install hfsutils

(Sorry to be repetitive)

also the dev tools , or system tools might not have been installed by your brother

on ubuntu i am not sure of there group names for apt-get to use

I've been copy and past the commands.
I tried to look up sudo apt-get install hfsutils and nothing was there to tell me what it is, so I hate to be a pain but can you explain what it is.

So this the results for sudo apt-get install hfsutils

jared@jared-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get install hfsutils
[sudo] password for jared:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
hfsutils is already the newest version.
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
libsdl-console libsdl-gfx1.2-4 python-pycurl libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil
libtagc0 python-pyogg podsleuth python-pyrex unixodbc odbcinst1debian1
libsdl-ttf2.0-0 libtaglib2.0-cil libboo2.0-cil libkarma0 libavahi1.0-cil
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 17 not upgraded.
jared@jared-desktop:~$

i am wondering if your brother even installed the ubuntu repos for you to be able to install any software at all .

it is looking like you are missing all of the system tools and apt-get is not set up .

have your brother come over and FIX it .

Could be you need to do..

sudo fdisk -l

without being root I just get command not found.. I always forget the sudo stuff for Ubuntu,.. :(

SO recently I was looking at some forums online, some people think its the raid thats in the external hard, so is there a way to have ubuntu recognize the raid so i can access it.

sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60060155904 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7301 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xfcb1ec06

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 7114 57143173+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 7115 7301 1502077+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 7115 7301 1502046 82 Linux swap / Solaris