hey, all. i'm a linux newbie--i've been running mandrake 9.1 for about 3 weeks now or so. i'm really enjoying it, despite the fact that i have had some problems configuring stuff. however, linux basically totally justified itself yesterday when it read a cd full of mp3s that i thought i had totally lost because windows would crash every time because a few of the files had been corrupted.

anyway, i just have a quick question. i have an 80gb external hard drive (maxtor 5000 LE) that i have connected through my usb (not 2.0, unfortunately). i was curious, because windows xp seems to read this drive pretty quickly, but linux always takes a long time (e.g. when i open it in konqueror). i was just wondering why that is--does it have something to do with linux reading files differently than windows? also, if possible, i was wondering if there's any way to speed it up--if not, it's not a big deal. i figure it's definitely worth the trade off for all the other benefits.

just thought i'd ask.

Welcome to the world of linux.

What file system is the drive using? And when you say the drive is slow, do you mean it takes a while before it shows up in Konqueror, or is it also slow when performing read/write? Do you notice any difference when accessing the drive over command line?

slight

thanks for the reply.

when i say the drive is slow, yeah, i pretty much only mean showing up in konqueror or other programs (e.g. when i add a directory to my playlist in xmms). as far as reading/writing, i haven't noticed any speed problems--i play my entire xmms playlist off of that drive, and there's no problems at all doing that. i also wrote an entire cd of mp3s to it last night, which took around 10 minutes or so--i don't know if that's slow or not...

i haven't tried to access it in the command line yet, and i'm not at home right now--i'll do that later on today.

as far as the file system, i'll have to check that when i get home as well--i'm guessing it's fat32--i was using it for a few days in windows only before i put linux on my computer too.

well, to be honest i'm not sure how to check what file system it is, so i don't know.

as for accessing it in the console, i changed to the directory and did ls, and the directories all popped right up.

i checked more into the file system. in kde's control center it's listed as "auto."

open a terminal and give in the cammand mount.
It should show up something simular like:

/dev/hda1 on / type ext2 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/hda3 on /disks/disk1 type ext2 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/hdd1 on /disks/disk2 type ext2 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
none on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)

next to type you can find the files system type :-)

But be aware that the maximum transfer rate of USB1 is 12Mbits/s (excuse me if I'm wrong) and if we take a cd with 700Mb of data it would take 7,78 minutes to do the job.

You can always try to tweak your hd by using hdparm but I'm not sure if it work's with usb devices.

Cheers

You can use fdisk to determine your fs type.
But be aware of what you are doing :-).
Just open a terminal and be come root (su -).
and give in "fdisk /dev/hda" and press p to print the info of the drive. press q to quit.

Enjoy

you can copy your files to a temp folder then format it using ext file system then copy them back again but this has a drow back you cant access you files from a windows based pc after formatting. i use a usb flash device a 256 mb drive and works the same speed as windows pc s. the thing about konqurer showing up slow can be when you open it it will download the directory listing from the harddrive and if you have a lot of files this can take up some time.