Strange "CD" partition on external hard drive
 

I have a 1T Western Digital external hard drive. As usual my first thing to do was use cfdisk to wipe out the existing partitions and create new ones.

When I plug it in, it mounts a "partition" which does not show up in fdisk, and it mounts it as if it were a CD (ie. /dev/srx instead of /dev/sdx) labeled WD Smart Media or something like that.

Any idea how to access and remove this partition?

Thanks in advance,
Brian

Yep..check out this thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-drive-871051/

That drive, from what I understand, has a 'utility' partition on it, that's supposed to run some software or other stuff, to let it work under Windows/Mac with their backup utilities. Kind of like the U3 garbage on Sandisk thumbdrives.

Thanks for the reply. parted only sees the one partition (the one I created). And I have been careful to use /dev/sdx rather than /dev/sdxy.

Brian

You don't say what model you've got. I don't have one, but I do remember reading about some of them that have that 'cdrom' device as part of their firmware. You can't get rid of it, but it shouldn't keep you from using the whole disk. How big is the partition you made?? If you're seeing the whole 1TB drive as you'd like, then that's probably the case, and you can ignore the /dev/sdx.

It reports at 999.5 GB. I'm not sure of the model number. It does not interfere with me using the device, it's just irritating. I guess if it is part of the firmware that is why the partitioning tools do not see it.

Thanks for your help.
Brian