USB external Hard Drive

jag2000 · 11-15-2007, 07:15 AM

Hello i just bought a 320GB Seagate usb/firewire External HDD. I am awaiting it from newegg as we speak. I was wondering if anyone had any issues with 7.10 or is it just plug and play?

will it just auto mount or will i have to mount it manually?

DotHQ · 11-15-2007, 07:21 AM

Most I have tried do not auto mount. But if you do a:
tail /var/log/messages
right after you plug in the device you will see what device ID your system assigned to the USB drive. It is normally sdb1 or sdc1 depending on how your hard drives are set up.

Then you can mount it with a command such as:

mount /dev/sdb1 /xdrive

Assuming /xdrive is a dir you previously created for a mount point.

jag2000 · 11-15-2007, 07:25 AM

ok so assuming that works will i have to mount it everytime i plug it back in? i am unsure if i am just gonnna leave it on my server or take it with me to work or my parents /inlaws etc.

Slick666 · 11-15-2007, 09:07 AM

The problems that I had were these:

If I rebooted the machine I would have to unplug the drive (happens once a week at most)
After a period of time the system would make the drive read-only as a safety feature. I had to search the ubuntu forums for the answer.

I can't recall the exact solution with the read only feature but if you search the ubuntu forums it should be one of the first threads that come up

DotHQ · 11-15-2007, 09:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jag2000

ok so assuming that works will i have to mount it everytime i plug it back in? i am unsure if i am just gonnna leave it on my server or take it with me to work or my parents /inlaws etc.

Yep. And before you unplug it you should un mount it. The command for that is:

umount /dirname

*no device name needed, just the dir name that you used for the mount point. Also the command is u m o u n t ...I've baffeled myself typeing unmount and wondering why it didn't work. It's because it is umount not unmount.

If you don't remember what dir you mounted it under just type:
df -h (-h makes the sizes easier to read, not required)
and it will show you all devices including the external drive.

shep7620 · 11-16-2007, 03:02 PM

The new version of Ubuntu does mount it automatically like others have said earlier. What's also easier is that it comes with the NTFS tool, so there shouldn't be compatibility issue when using it out of the box. One suggestion would be to format to FAT, so you can use it for all the platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux).

SilentSam · 11-16-2007, 05:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shep7620

The new version of Ubuntu does mount it automatically like others have said earlier. What's also easier is that it comes with the NTFS tool, so there shouldn't be compatibility issue when using it out of the box. One suggestion would be to format to FAT, so you can use it for all the platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux).

FAT is a big mistake. Fat32 only allows file sizes of 2^32 - 1 bytes, which is 4 Gb. Therefore you can't store DVD images on FAT filesystems.

shep7620 · 11-16-2007, 05:40 PM

Solid info SilentSam. I don't see myself transferring a file over 4 gigs though (thankfully). Would you know a better format that is compatible with osX and Ubuntu?

SilentSam · 11-16-2007, 06:01 PM

HFS+ is much better. In Windows, you'd have to install a tool like Macdrive to read the partition, but in Ubuntu the support I believe is out of the box from 7.04 on.

shep7620 · 11-16-2007, 06:43 PM

Good stuff, thanks again!