hi all,

i have an external hard drive that i want to format as ext3. eventually i want to back up my home partition to it so that i can do a fresh install of the ubuntu 8.04.

i installed qtparted, but it doesn't see the usb hdd. i suppose this makes sense as it isn't formatted.

how do i format the drive if i can't see it?

tia...

I would suggest downloading and burning Gparted. You can boot from the disk, and it sees all. A really slick program. Luck Dan
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

well, that's step one - set up a partition. this is rather difficult to do if the system does not see the USB drive as a bulk storage device.

So that's the first thing to fix. Check dmesg | tail after you plug in the USB drive and see if its recognized - it should come up as /dev/sdb or some such. If it doesn't, then you have to chase that problem.

qtparted or fdisk should be able to put a partition on the drive once it is recognized as the proper sort of device. Usually you want to make it one fat32 type partition.

After you create the partition, you'll need to use mkfs to format it for use. After that, it should be ready to go.

see the manual for parted at http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/m...no/parted.html for some ideas.

the output is below. i think it sees it, but don't see an sdb or anyting similar. i will look into qparted and see if that picks it up.

dmesg | tail
[ 734.265813] usb 4-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 734.265990] scsi3 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[ 734.266073] usb-storage: device found at 4
[ 734.266075] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[ 739.259146] usb-storage: device scan complete
[ 744.858924] usb 4-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[ 755.081740] usb 4-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[ 760.314899] usb 4-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[ 770.537718] usb 4-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[ 770.670099] 3:0:0:0: scsi: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery

Looks like your bios can see the device, so I can't see why qtparted can't.

I find the best tool is PartedMagic which has GParted and some very nice GUI tools. It boots with very good USB support (depending on your hardware) and even has network support (though not WiFi), and an archive tool for doing backups. I've been using it for some time now as my main troubleshooting and rescue disk.

is the fact this drive is scsi relevant? gparted booted from cd couldn't see it, either.

does anyone have any troubleshooting ideas? should i try formatting it fat32 on an a winxp box?

tia...

this indicates that the device, while found and identified, did not talk properly like a storage device should.

As I read it, a reset command was sent and the expected response was not received. My guess is that means that there is some problem with the device. You might try and see if another OS will recognize it to do anything with it but I don't put any high odds on that.

Maybe a USB 1 port with a USB 2 device that won't cooperate with slow ports? shouldn't, though. Will other drive devices work with that port?

good luck.

If you do get functional access to the device, you need nothing more than fdisk to partition the device, and mke2fs to create a filesystem (or filesystems). These tools should be part of most distros.
--- rod.

bryan, winxp didn't recognize it.

i tried the usb hd on a port that has worked with a usb thumb drive before. it didn't work there, either.

do you have any ideas how to troubleshoot it? i could see opening the computer case and putting the drive in to see if it is recognized. i can see putting in another hd into the usb case to see if it works with a different drive.

is there any troubleshooting i can do without picking up a screw driver?

just to be clear - the fact this is a scsi drive shouldn't make a difference, right?

USB Mass Storage devices are normally recognized as SCSI devices in Linux.
--- rod.

Could my jumper settings be at fault? should the usb HDD be master, slave or select? it doesn't have a jumper right now.

i put in a second hdd and it is being seen - so it is a HDD issue, not a case issue.

tia...

Oops. My bad. I saw 'USB' and 'drive' and incorrectly thought 'thumb drive'. However, I believe any mass storage device interfaced through USB is likely to appear to be the same. Is this a conventional ATA hard drive piggybacked onto a USB adapter of some sort? If yes, then it may well be the lack of correct jumpering on the hard drive. Is it possible to remove the drive and install it in a conventional IDE interface? Or replace the existing drive with a known working ATA hard drive installed on the USB adapter?
--- rod.

i think this drive is ata or sata. should it be jumpered as master, slave or cable select? i'd venture slave is correct, but that's a wild guess.

tia...

If it is a single drive on it's bus, then Cable Select or Master should work. Definitely not Slave. It won't hurt anything if you use the wrong setting; it just won't work until you get it jumpered right.
--- rod.