Do external FAT32 hard drives work with Linux?
 

I have a FAT32 external USB hard drive with a bunch of stuff I want to copy onto a RHEL server. Is it as simple as it is on a Mac or PC where I just plug it in and it will show up, then I can copy all the files off of it?

If it is, how do I safely remove the drive after I'm done with it?

Hello,

yes it is as easy. Savest way to remove the drive is unmounting it and then wait until unmount is beeing done. Actually this is a good question since on Linux-systems it often looks like copying is ready but the syncronization takes place while the device is being unmounted.

Markus

Insert the drive and see whether it mounts automatically (I don't know about RHEL, but I suppose it'll have that ability). When the directory pops up under /mnt or /media, do whatever you want to do with it, then right click on the directory and click on "Unmount volume" or anything similar. If you do that, wait till the light on the drive (if there is one) stops flashing before pulling it out (!).

If you really want to be sure, first open a command line as root, execute

then unmount the drive.

-A

I guess my only "issue" (since I never done this before) is that my only access to the server is through the CLI.

Ok, insert your drive and then execute 'dmesg'. The last few lines should give a clue which device node it has (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb, ..). For example, I'll assume it's /dev/sdb.

Log in as root and create any directory in /mnt (say /mnt/drive) and then mount the device:

This should give you access to the first (and probably only) partition on the drive, via this directory you've just created. After you're done copying files and stuff:

You can then delete the directory:

That's all :)

-A

ok, thanks