External hard drive not recognized on Centos 6

suivezmoi · 11-25-2015, 09:33 PM

I recently installed Centos 6 on my Dell Dimension 8300 desktop. When I was using Linux Mint, my computer recognized my WD 640 GB external hard drive. Centos 6 does not recognize it. What's the solution?

JJJCR · 11-25-2015, 09:37 PM

ntfs-3g driver installed on Centos 6? what's the file system of your WD?

jefro · 11-25-2015, 09:38 PM

User permission to mount usb?

berndbausch · 11-25-2015, 11:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by suivezmoi

I recently installed Centos 6 on my Dell Dimension 8300 desktop. When I was using Linux Mint, my computer recognized my WD 640 GB external hard drive. Centos 6 does not recognize it. What's the solution?

Do you see any trace of that drive? For example:

a message in /var/log/messages
the lsblk command
the blkid command
the lsscsi command
the lsusb command

Note that the lsscsi command needs to be installed manually; it's probably not in your system by default.

suivezmoi · 11-27-2015, 10:52 PM

TO JJJCR: File system of WD is ext3/ext4
Not too familiar with YUM. What is the command to install ntfs-3g driver?

suivezmoi · 11-27-2015, 10:55 PM

To berndbausch: I entered the lsblk, blkid, and lsusb commands. Computer recognizes external hard drive, but doesn't mount it.

suivezmoi · 11-27-2015, 11:09 PM

To jefro: I am root. Doesn't that give me user permission?

berndbausch · 11-27-2015, 11:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by suivezmoi

To berndbausch: I entered the lsblk, blkid, and lsusb commands. Computer recognizes external hard drive, but doesn't mount it.

That's a good start.
Try to manually mount the drive. You need

a directory, preferably empty
root permissions (it seems you are root already)
the device file that corresponds to your drive

You run:

mount devicefile directory

What's the result? Error message or will it be mounted?

JJJCR · 11-28-2015, 12:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by suivezmoi

TO JJJCR: File system of WD is ext3/ext4
Not too familiar with YUM. What is the command to install ntfs-3g driver?

you don't need to install ntfs-3g since the file system is compatible with Linux.

To install ntfs-3g driver check out this link: https://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/NTFS

suivezmoi · 11-28-2015, 07:47 PM

To bernbausch: Having problems mounting device: I chose [myhome]/Documents as my target directory. The difficulty is writing the correct command. What do I include: the device file system (ext3/ext4)? The name I created for the device? The full name of the device (Western Digital Technologies, Inc. My Book Essential Edition 2.0 (WDH1U)? The device drive (sdd1)?

berndbausch · 11-28-2015, 09:02 PM

The latter.

You use the device file as reported by a tool like lsblk. Here is an example (from a Raspberry Pi, which uses an SD card instead of a disk):

Code:

$ lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
mmcblk0     179:0    0 28.8G  0 disk
mmcblk0p1 179:1    0    1G  0 part
mmcblk0p2 179:2    0    1K  0 part
mmcblk0p3 179:3    0   32M  0 part /media/pi/SETTINGS
mmcblk0p5 179:5    0   60M  0 part /boot
mmcblk0p6 179:6    0 27.7G  0 part /

In this example, the device files for the various partitions are /dev/mmcblk0p1 etc. If I had to mount them, I would say

Code:

mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /home/users/myusername/Documents

You don't normally need to specify the file system type; the mount command figures this out. If it can't figure it out, you are missing the software for that file system type.

Also, the blkid command should give you clues what filesystem type this is:

Code:

$ sudo blkid
/dev/mmcblk0: PTUUID="00054b8f" PTTYPE="dos"
/dev/mmcblk0p1: LABEL="RECOVERY" UUID="6630-3761" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="00054b8f-01"
/dev/mmcblk0p3: LABEL="SETTINGS" UUID="01853b15-8e15-4cff-9dad-00ef72acd2c8" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="00054b8f-03"
/dev/mmcblk0p5: SEC_TYPE="msdos" LABEL="boot" UUID="02AC-7D90" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="00054b8f-05"
/dev/mmcblk0p6: LABEL="root" UUID="8ba69365-84b7-449b-b3ad-c7fbc4655493" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="00054b8f-06"

Again, if it doesn't, you need to add the software required to handle that file system type.

jefro · 11-28-2015, 09:42 PM

https://access.redhat.com/documentat...-Mounting.html

TxLonghorn · 11-29-2015, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by suivezmoi

Having problems mounting device: I chose [myhome]/Documents as my target directory.

That is not a good idea. Create a new mount point

Code:

mkdir $HOME/newmountpointname

When you mount at an existing directory, you will not be able to access the documents that already exist in the directory until you unmount.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suivezmoi

The difficulty is writing the correct command. What do I include: the device file system (ext3/ext4)? The name I created for the device? The full name of the device (Western Digital Technologies, Inc. My Book Essential Edition 2.0 (WDH1U)? The device drive (sdd1)?

EXAMPLE:

Code:

sudo mount /dev/sdd1 /mountpointname

Or, to make it easier, mount with udisks, which creates a directory for you in /media, using the Label, and then deletes it when you unmount.

Code:

udisks --mount /dev/sdd1

Mounted /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sdd1 at /media/DiskLabel