Don't know how to install external hdd
 

Hi All,

I have purchased a WD 250GBit external hdd. Can somebody point in the right direction as to how I can install it. My os is Mint 6. The system doesn't recognise the drive hence it would appear that the auto recognise function hasn't been set correctly. Where does the auto recognise function reside, and how do I modify it to recognise the hdd? can somebody help please. Thanks.

Regards
johnfrance

With modern distros, any USB device should be recognized when it is plugged in. If you can't find any other indication, then try this:
After plugging in the drive and turning it on, open a terminal and enter "dmesg|tail -n 20". You should see something similar to this:
In my case, this says the device was detected as "sde".

Next, run "mount" to see if possibly the drive did in fact automount. If not, the next thing to check would be if it is formatted. Run "fdisk /dev/sde" (substitute the correct label for "sde")

Let us know what you find, and we'll go from there.

Note that these commands must be entered as root---or, with something like Mint, with "sudo" added in front---eg "sudo fdisk /dev/sde"

Hi Pixellany,

Thanks for you help. I have done what you have suggested, with the following results:

john@john-desktop ~ $ dmesg| tail -n 20
[ 1708.011072] usb 3-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1708.118737] usb 3-3: USB disconnect, address 76
[ 1731.612029] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 77
[ 1731.762609] usb 3-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1731.885639] usb 3-3: USB disconnect, address 77
[ 1755.376033] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 78
[ 1755.526394] usb 3-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1755.658665] usb 3-3: USB disconnect, address 78
[ 1779.152029] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 79
[ 1779.301496] usb 3-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1779.425193] usb 3-3: USB disconnect, address 79
[ 1802.916029] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 80
[ 1803.066214] usb 3-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1803.191468] usb 3-3: USB disconnect, address 80
[ 1826.684030] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 81
[ 1826.834127] usb 3-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1826.956372] usb 3-3: USB disconnect, address 81
[ 1850.448028] usb 3-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 82
[ 1850.597562] usb 3-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1850.720038] usb 3-3: USB disconnect, address 82
john@john-desktop ~ $ mount
/dev/sdb1 on / type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
/proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
lrm on /lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=755)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/john/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=john)

What do you make of this?

Regards
Johnfrance

First, it is not getting auto-mounted. If it were, the "mount" output would have something like /dev/sdd1 mounted at /mnt/<something> or /media/<something>.

I'm no expert at dmesg output, but what you show does not look promising. Go back farther to see how the messages start. (You can use dmesg by itself, or maybe dmesg|grep "usb 3-3")

The other thing to try is to go into /dev and delete all the disk device files except the ones you know you are using. For example, your "mount" output suggests you are only using sda and sdb. Thus you could delete /dev/sdc, /dev/sdc1, /dev/sdd, etc.
Then connect the external drive and see what new nodes are created.

But try dmesg first---it should show you the node name if the disk is being recognized. (Try also "dmesg|grep "\[sd")

ALSO---try "lsusb" (I'm not totally sure, but I think the drive will show here even if dmesg does not show it being assigned to a node)

Is it a Raptor hard drive? IIRC WD external hard disks are all raptors, not sure though. My brother has one of 160GB and whenever I connect it, it opens up a prompt asking me to run the autorun thing on the disk, I refuse and it mounts. Are you getting any such things? Also are things like HAL, fuse, etc installed on the system which help in mounting and the likes? And are you able to mount other USB things, maybe pendrive, a camera, a phone etc..

As said above, produce output of "lsusb". [disk should be connected]