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#1 2006-03-02 04:47:50

ralvy
Member
From: Santa Monica, California
Registered: 2004-12-06
Posts: 275

External USB Hard Drives

Will I need special drivers to allow Arch Linux to see and use an external USB hard drive?

Is there a size limitation under linux when considering external hard drives? I was considering a 300gb drive.

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#2 2006-03-02 07:06:02

mtrivs
Member
From: Syracuse, NY
Registered: 2005-12-26
Posts: 183

Re: External USB Hard Drives

I have a 160GB HD i use, i have problems with it though.  I think it is because i dont have the right modules loaded, or I may have bad blocks on the drive.  It works sometimes, but i think it is just the way i configured it.  you should be able to get a drive that big to work no problem.  the only thing is that you may have to format it into a filesystem that arch will be able to write to.  I use ext3 along with the ext3 drivers for windows which allows read/write in both operating systems!

Good luck!


~HP ZV6000 Series CTO~
-AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz
-1.5GB RAM
-128MB ATI Mobility Radeon X200m
-80GB 5400RPM HD
[img]http://imagegen.last.fm/scarface/recenttracks/mtrivs.gif[/img]

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#3 2006-03-02 15:20:44

ralvy
Member
From: Santa Monica, California
Registered: 2004-12-06
Posts: 275

Re: External USB Hard Drives

mtrivs wrote:

the only thing is that you may have to format it into a filesystem that arch will be able to write to.  I use ext3 along with the ext3 drivers for windows which allows read/write in both operating systems!

Have you tried formatting it with vfat?

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#4 2006-03-03 03:28:05

mtrivs
Member
From: Syracuse, NY
Registered: 2005-12-26
Posts: 183

Re: External USB Hard Drives

I have tried that, but i dont like that i am unable to store files which sizes are larger than 4GB.  I would rather use vfat if it wasnt for this little drawback, because then i wouldnt need any drivers to be able to do the same thing in both windows and linux.


~HP ZV6000 Series CTO~
-AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz
-1.5GB RAM
-128MB ATI Mobility Radeon X200m
-80GB 5400RPM HD
[img]http://imagegen.last.fm/scarface/recenttracks/mtrivs.gif[/img]

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#5 2006-03-03 03:34:21

mtrivs
Member
From: Syracuse, NY
Registered: 2005-12-26
Posts: 183

Re: External USB Hard Drives

The problem was somehow fixed after tinkering with the fstab entry...
This is what snowman suggested i use for my ext3 external drive and it works!

/dev/sda1       /mnt/hd_ext    ext3 noauto,user,rw,suid,dev,exec,async   1       0

~HP ZV6000 Series CTO~
-AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz
-1.5GB RAM
-128MB ATI Mobility Radeon X200m
-80GB 5400RPM HD
[img]http://imagegen.last.fm/scarface/recenttracks/mtrivs.gif[/img]

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#6 2006-03-03 04:06:31

ralvy
Member
From: Santa Monica, California
Registered: 2004-12-06
Posts: 275

Re: External USB Hard Drives

/dev/sda1       /mnt/hd_ext    ext3 noauto,user,rw,suid,dev,exec,async   1       0

Thanks! I'll have to revisit this thread when I get the device. I don't need files larger than 4gb, so I can use vfat for that drive so I can access it with other OSs.

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#7 2006-03-03 04:09:51

mtrivs
Member
From: Syracuse, NY
Registered: 2005-12-26
Posts: 183

Re: External USB Hard Drives

you would only use that line in the fstab if you are going to mount a drive that is formated in the ext3 file system.  If you are going to use vfat then you would have to use a different line in the fstab.


~HP ZV6000 Series CTO~
-AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz
-1.5GB RAM
-128MB ATI Mobility Radeon X200m
-80GB 5400RPM HD
[img]http://imagegen.last.fm/scarface/recenttracks/mtrivs.gif[/img]

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#8 2006-03-03 15:44:04

ralvy
Member
From: Santa Monica, California
Registered: 2004-12-06
Posts: 275

Re: External USB Hard Drives

mtrivs wrote:

you would only use that line in the fstab if you are going to mount a drive that is formated in the ext3 file system.  If you are going to use vfat then you would have to use a different line in the fstab.

Yeah, I understand that. Here's what I've been using with fat partitions so far, as it's alwys worked:

/dev/hda5    /mnt/dos    msdos    auto,umask=000,uid=1000,gid=100        0    0
/dev/hda6    /mnt/win    vfat    auto,umask=000,uid=1000,gid=100        0    0
/dev/hdb1    /mnt/back    vfat    auto,umask=000,uid=1000,gid=100        0    0

I'll try that approach first.

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#9 2006-03-03 17:02:06

jaboua
Member
Registered: 2005-11-05
Posts: 634

Re: External USB Hard Drives

Remember to use "noauto" instead of "auto" on the USB harddrive. If not, it will try to mount at boot which will make an error if it's not connected...

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#10 2006-03-03 20:23:22

ralvy
Member
From: Santa Monica, California
Registered: 2004-12-06
Posts: 275

Re: External USB Hard Drives

jaboua wrote:

Remember to use "noauto" instead of "auto" on the USB harddrive. If not, it will try to mount at boot which will make an error if it's not connected...

Yeah, I realize that. That's what I do with my MO drive, which doesn't always have a cartridge in it. Thanks.

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