mounting new drive
 

Hello,

I got myself a problem and would appreciate help. I purchased two new RAID-capable G-force Fantom 3TB USB drives. Both formatted with NTFS and it is said require NTFS-3G for full functionality. I do have NTFS-3G on my RHEL5.5. Other NTFS USB drives, such as 750GB Passport from Western Digital, are mounted and fully functional. New drives, however, do not mount. Here is the output:

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[root@G5NNJN1 ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1498.6 GB, 1498675150848 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182203 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 10 80293+ de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 11 663 5245222+ 8e Linux LVM
/dev/sda3 * 688 719 257040 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 720 182203 1457770230 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 728 4644 31463302+ 8e Linux LVM
/dev/sda6 4645 182203 1426242636 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdc: 749.4 GB, 749452918784 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91115 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 91116 731887584 7 HPFS/NTFS
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The drive is apparently seen by the system as device 007 on bus 1 though:

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[root@G5NNJN1 ~]# lsusb
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 007 Device 002: ID 413c:3012 Dell Computer Corp. Optical Wheel Mouse
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 006 Device 002: ID 413c:2003 Dell Computer Corp. Keyboard
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 152d:2509 JMicron Technology Corp. / JMicron USA Technology Corp.
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1058:070a Western Digital Technologies, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:2514 Standard Microsystems Corp. USB 2.0 Hub
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The insert that came with the drives also says that Linux distros with appropriate kernels support large large logical volumes (LUNS) > 2TB. Could this be a problem? What is appropriate kernels then?

FantomDrives techsupport responded that Linux is not supported, only Windows and Mac. If I knew that ahead, I certainly would not buy them, but I found this afterwards.

The question is - should I return both drives or there is a way to make them functional? If NTFS-3G cannot handle the drives, are there other drivers that can be tried? Can I reformat the drives?

I have a Segate 3Tb USB drive attached to a Fedora 15 system. F15 has 2.6.40 kernel. There were a couple minor issues re-partitioning the drive with LVM, but not significant.

RHEL 5.5 is a significantly older kernel (I think it is 2.6.9) and doesn't have support for drives over 2Tb. (Apparently, there are some folks who have been able to use Advanced Format Disks on older systems with some careful alignment of partitions. I haven't tried this.)

Drivers cannot compensate for a lack of kernel support. To use a 3Tb drive, easiest path is to update to a newer system.