light slowly flashing on external hard drive
 

A new WD Elements portable hard drive has been plugged into a USB 3 port on a Linux desktop.

The hard drive does not appear on an fdisk -l
listing. The small light on the drive is slowly flashing.

What is happening ? Why doesn't the drive appear in the fdisk listing ?

Is the system trying to automatically mount the hard drive ?

Is the USB port underpowered ?

I hesitate to unplug the hard drive while the light is flashing in case this corrupts the filesystem
on the hard drive.

If fdisk doesn't see it the filesystem is safe - unplug it anytime. What does this return (run from a terminal) just after you plug it in.

debianlearner,

If it is not already installed, install Gnome Disk Utility (aka Disks):

Launch Disks:
Then refer to:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/2855...-mount-devices

You may need to use Edit Mount Options.

I would suggest that the flashing light is because the USB port is supplying insufficient power to spin the disk up to a ready state. I assume the disk is in an external housing, is there an auxiliary power port on the enclosure?

my :twocents:

Play Bonny!

:hattip:

The blue light on my WD Elements external hard drive is always “slowly flashing” except when it’s being accessed. I just presumed that was an indication of readiness. It has external power.

Is the drive mounted?

Please see the thread 'problem with USB 3 port' also in Hardware forum for further
development.