Topic: Connecting USB harddisk

[EdelingF]

I bought a LaCie USB 500Gb harddisk to make backups.
I've installed smeserver-usbdisksmanager and tried to connect the harddisk.
Usbdisksmanager has seen the HD (/dev/sda1), but since there is no UUID and I really don't know how to, I can't connect to the HD
It's still formatted in NTFS, which is visible in usbdisksmanager.
The disk is not under /media/.

If I do /usr/bin/udevinfo -a -p /sys/block/sda I get "couldn't get the class device"

What did I do wrong? Do I need to format the disk first and if yes, how do I do it since I can't connect to it.

[Daniel B.]

Hi.
Yes, you should format it as NTFS is not very well suported under linux. ext3 would be much better.
To format it, login as root, then:

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fdisk -l to see all the disk your system has reconized, you should see the one you want (seems to be /dev/sda)

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fdisk /dev/sdayou'll have a menu to manage the partition on the disk, remove every existing partitions with the 'd' option. Then create a new one with the 'n' option (type primary, and you can let the default options if you just want one big partition using all the space). Once it's done, write the changes to the partition table with the 'w' option. Now you have a partition, you need to create a file system on it:

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mkfs.ext3 -m 1 -L LABEL /dev/sda1 replacing LABEL by the name you want for the partition. Then, your USB disk should be ready.

[EdelingF]

Tried to do fdisk /dev/sda and got Unable to open /dev/sda

Somehow my SME has seen the HD but sees it no more. Should I perhaps remove the partition while connected to my WinXP machine?

[Daniel B.]

Tried to do fdisk /dev/sda and got Unable to open /dev/sda

Somehow my SME has seen the HD but sees it no more. Should I perhaps remove the partition while connected to my WinXP machine?

What does

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fdisk -lreturns when the disk is pluged in? SME should see the disk even if there's no partition, so removing and formating it under XP won't change anything.

[EdelingF]

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fdisk -l gives:

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Disk /dev/hda: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1          13      104391   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hda2              14        4998    40042012+  fd  Linux raid autodetect

Disk /dev/md1: 106 MB, 106823680 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 26080 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8 * 512 = 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/md1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/md2: 41.0 GB, 41002926080 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 10010480 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8 * 512 = 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/md2 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-0: 40.6 GB, 40667971584 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 9928704 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8 * 512 = 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 268 MB, 268435456 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 65536 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8 * 512 = 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

The USB-disk seems not detected, but in the USB-disksmanager it says:

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DEV     Mount  fstab file UUID      Label   Filesystem  Interface
/dev/sda1  no  no      unknown   unknown    ntfs        unknown
I've rebooted the server allready, but nothing changes. I know I've seen USB at interface. I've also changed the USB-port, but also no effect.

[EdelingF]

I've got the USB-disk connected!!!
I formatted the disk again (NTFS), uninstalled usbdisksmanager, reinstalled it again and rebooted the server and there it was.....
Followed the instructions and now it's up and running.