After installing linux, Debian etch, I am having problems with my 80gig Free Agent External hard drive. What seems to be the problem, is when I let the computer sit for more than 5 to 10 minutes the file system turns to Read-Only. I have tuned off the screensaver/hibernate/sleep etc. I am running it on a Dell Inspiron E1505. It can't be Debian, because I have had the same problem on Kubuntu, openSUSE 10.2, and Fedora Core 7 as well. Do external hard drives go to sleep on their own? Please help this is very frustrating. Thanks.

Generally USB storage devices don't go to sleep. That being said i see you got a laptop. I'm just curious do you get the same results if you plug in the same drive into a desktop, either yours, or your friend's.

I would suggest checking through the BIOS and maybe seeing if you can disable/change USB features. For example there might be some simple power management enabled on it via the BIOS.

In your average case, kernel turns drives read-only if it cannot write to the volume. Be that failing HDD, bad link, or whatever. Once it figures out that the data being written is being done incorrectly it will flag the partition as bad and put it into read-only mode. I suggest going through the system logs and seeing if you can find out what the system is thinking as far as putting your external drive into read-only.

This may not be your ideal solution but it should be a good place to start.

I looked through my Bios and there was nothing to do with the Usb drives. I am going to try on a desktop later tonight. Any other ideas?

When it freezes, post the output of:

Thats the problem, when it freezes i cant even launch terminal

does the whole file system including / go to read only or does the file system on the external drive go to read only