Cannot get Iomega external hard drive to mount with Raspberry Pi, running Debian.
Linux - NewbieThis Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question?
If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
ok, so if i format it ext3/4, then i won't be able to copy back & forth between my laptop or pc?
also if i format it ext3/4, will it mount more easily?
Distribution: OpenSUSE 13.2 64bit-Gnome on ASUS U52F
Posts: 1,444
Rep:
Linux can see NTFS file systems and also FAT32. I think there is a limit in file size about 4 GB or more I am not really sure. So if your external hard drive is formatted in eather of these you can use with Windows and Linux operating system. Again I am not sure but I believe FAT16 is discontinued and FAT32 is in its way out too.
You can plug in a USB flash or hard disk drive while the Pi is running without any problem. The USB device will be sensed by the Pi, however, it probably won't be added to the operating system's file system. That will require some manual intervention to "mount" the device onto the file system. A flash or hard drive may be configured with one, or more, partitions, which you can create yourself in the unlikely event that the drive doesn't already have any. Creating partitions is covered in a separate tutorial: [TBD]
USB Drive Hierarchy
Linux hardware devices are organized and identified by letters under the file system's device hierarchy, /dev. USB drives attached to the Pi are found under the file system as /dev/sdX, where "X" starts with the letter "a" representing the first USB drive, "b" for the second drive, "c" for the third, etc. The individual partitions on each drive are represented by incremented numbers, starting with "1". So, the first partition on the first USB drive is located in the file system as /dev/sda1, the second partition on that drive is /dev/sda2, the third partition on a third drive would be /dev/sdc3, etc.
Mount Points
In order to make a partition accessible to the file system, you need to use the Linux "mount" command, referencing the hardware (e.g., /dev/hda1) and a "mount point" in the file system, which is any empty directory, usually created for the purpose by the user. There is a canonical (i.e., standard) directory path where mount points are usually created: the /mnt directory. You can create a new directory under /mnt for each partition to be mounted, and it can be named anything you want as long as it doesn't contain any spaces. You might want to name it to correspond to the drive's physical characteristics, e.g., /mnt/1GB_USB_flash, or /mnt/120GB_USB_hard_disk.
Mounting a Partition
After creating the mount point for a partition, the only thing left to do is to actually mount the drive partition, e.g.:
sudo mount -o uid=pi,gid=pi /dev/sda1 /mnt/1GB_USB_flash
where:
-o (lowercase letter "o", not the number zero) specifies that an option string follows
uid=pi,gid=pi specifies the user ID is user "pi" and the group ID is "pi" (note there are no spaces allowed between these terms)
/dev/sda1 is the first partition on the first USB drive
/mnt/1GB_USB_flash is the mount point directory
And you probably need to do something like this
Quote:
Adding USB Storage
If you are going to add some drives to share, and you have not already done so add them. For a tutorial on how to connect USB flash drives and hard drives to your Pi, see: Adding USB Drives to a Raspberry Pi
After reading the above tutorial you will want to tweak where your drives are mounted so that they mount in the share area. First create a directory then mount the drive there.
Code:
sudo mkdir /home/shares/public/disk1
Code:
sudo mount /dev/sdxx /home/shares/public/disk1
Where sdxx is where your drive is in the file system's device hierarchy. i.e. /dev/sda1
Remount USB storage on startup
When Raspberry Pi is rebooted Samba service will automatically restart, but USB disk will not be automatically mounted. This can be remedied by editing /etc/fstab
Code:
sudo nano /etc/fstab
and adding following line
Code:
/dev/sdxx /home/shares/public/disk1 auto noatime 0 0
Where sdxx is where your drive is in the file system's device hierarchy. i.e. /dev/sda1 .
If you're having troubles with permissions, use gid and uid options. So, instead of previous line, add following to /etc/fstab
Code:
/dev/sdxx /home/shares/public/disk1 auto gid=pi,uid=pi,noatime 0 0
Again, sdxx is where your drive is in the file system's device hierarchy. i.e. /dev/sda1 .
The op wants to be able to write to the drive as well which requires ntfs-3g which is not present on pi so hence the choice of install ntfs or format to ext3/4
Unless you know of a way to write to ntfs file system?
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.
