[Sussex] external hard drives - much confusion.

[John D.]

On Saturday 04 November 2006 21:04, Steven Dobson wrote:
> John, Colin
>
> On Sat, 2006-11-04 at 17:46 +0000, Colin Tuckley wrote:
> > John D. wrote:
> > Depending on which distro you are running it may get auto mounted. Take a
> > look in /etc/mtab and see if the drive mentioned in /var/log/messages has
> > been mounted, if not then try adding a line like:
> >
> > /dev/sda1      /media/usbdrive vfat    rw,users,noauto  0       0
> >
> > to /etc/fstab
>
> No don't do this.  Not for a USB attach device.  MSDOS file systems (pre
> NTFS I believe) do not support hot removal even if the hardware does.
> There is lots of pages on the WEB about this with USB key drives.
>
> Before unpluging a MSDOS filesystem device you should first unmount it
> or you could lose file system integerty.  Personally I would do that
> anyway becuase just unplugging a device risks data loss.
>
> > > Can anyone advise me, as to how I might get this working ?
>
> My bet would be that the drive is as yet unformatted, and therefore the
> automounter can't mount is because there is nothing to mount.  You need
> to format it.
>
> If you're going to use it on a duel boot system then I would suggest
> formatting it under Windows.
>
> If it is only to be used with Linux then you might want to first
> partition it.  Take a look in /var/log/messages to find out what the
> device name is (I'll assume /dev/sda[1] like Colin - Note if you're
> using SATA disk then these also come up on the SCSI disk interface as
> the first SATA driver will be /dev/sda so do check) and then:
>
>    # cfdisk /dev/sda
>
> to partition the disk.  And then
>
>    # mkfs -V -t ext3 /dev/sda1
>
> You'll need to run mkfs for each partition you create.
>
> > Alternatively bring it to the BCF tomorrow and we can try to sort it out.
>
> I'll be there so do bring it along.
>
> Hope this helps
> Steve
>
> [1]
>
> The name can be broken down thus:
>
>     sd[a-z][1-99]
>
>     sd   - SCSI disk  (The driver's name)
>     a-z  - The "number" of the disk.  'a' is the first disk, 'b' the
>             second and so on, and
>     1-99 - The partition number.
>
> You'll get a different file in /dev for the whole disk (/dev/sda) and
> then a set of files with number, one for each partition.
Ok Steve,

I did the suggestion and initially it gave me some errors and I had to make 
the /dev/sda1 bootable for it to write to the partition table - not sure what 
thats all about, so.........

When I issued the second command I'm not getting some indication that it's 
formatting the disc as per the command (Writing inode tables etc etc), yes 
it's proving very slow - but I suppose thats to be expected with USB 1.1 - 
which is why I really want to get it working via ethernet. Not scathingly 
fast, but still quicker than the USB standard that I've got available.

I'll be round to the BCF tomorrow.

regards

John D.