Hi!
I am planning to buy a new external USB hdd. Will it be possible to mount it in Slackware 12.1? I would like to format it in FAT32 in order to be able to access it through Slackware and from Win too.

Thanks,
Glore2002.-

you will definitely be able to mount it
and it should be just as easy as mounting a cd as far as i can tell

Keep in mind that if you have really big files (4GB+) that FAT32 will not work for you. A NTFS partition might work better for you in that case. On my external hdd I have many partitions: 2 NTFS, 1 Linux, and 1 FAT32.

Hello!
How can I mount it?

Thanks
Glore2002.-

With "mount".

With HAL you no longer have to issue mount in order to mount external drives. You can simply go to "Storage Media" in Konqueror/Dolphin and click on the external partition's icon to mount it. Thunar has the same functionality as well (with volman I think).

If you are at the command line a lot like I am you may prefer to use something like pmount. It is a wrapper for mount that allows non-root users who are in the plugdev group mount external partitions (and internal ones as well if they are whitelisted). It also comes with pmount-hal which I think you would find useful as it uses HAL to detect all of the partition's options. Essentially executing
would be the equivalent of mounting it from your file manager as described eariler.

You can also set your system up so that partitions are mounted automatically upon device insertion, have icons appear on your desktop, etc. I don't use these features, however.

Thank you! The reason I asked how to mount the drive was because it wasn't mounted automatically when connecting it and I wasn't able to mount it by hand either. This happened at work (with Ubuntu). Finally I could mount the unit. Now, I will try at home with Slackware.

The reason it didn't work was that I was connecting the USB cable (the one that comes with the external device to an extension USB cable and then the unit appeared as an icon but couldn't be mounted (that was what confused me). The message was "Unit can't be mounted". Without the usb extender, the drive worked ok.

So, as a conclusion, external usb hdd shouldn't be used with extenders! (maybe not all of them but, at least, the one I've tried).

Thanks for the help,
Glore2002.-

You should be able to manually mount it with the extender attached as well, but the device name probably is different. You could use
to see which device is there to mount.
Something like
right after inserting the device would probably help as well.

USB extension cables are hit-or-miss, in my experience. I once had a webcam that many people just could NOT use an extension cable with, but I had no problems with it. The quality of the cable definitely makes a difference, as does the actual device you are trying to connect. The signal degrades pretty quickly with USB cables, so it really depends on the quality of the cable AND on the redundancy of the signal. An extension cable will almost definitely work with a simple Flash drive 100% of the time -- however, with a hard drive it's more hit-or-miss. Sometimes you can get away with using a powered USB hub, but even still some USB devices just don't play well with any extended length of cable.

One of the external USB discs that are for sale here is:

From Western Digital. Does anyone have it or knows for sure it works with linux?

Thanks!

Did you not see the reviews on that page? Someone does indeed own the device and says that it does work under Linux (and to be honest, I don't see why it wouldn't). I think, in general, external storage devices like these are among the least problematic pieces of hardware to get working under Linux.

You're right Nylex. I haven't read the reviews. From what I've seen until now, there are two possibilities: a) enclosure boxes where you insert any 2,5 sata or sata II hd and b) boxes that are sealed like the WD one, Verbatim, etc.

Thank you!