Arch Linux

otter

Member

From: Wroclaw

Registered: 2005-05-19

Posts: 31

Writing to External Hard Disk [solved]

Hi - I'm having some problems writing to my (new) external hard disk.

The hard disk is formatted in ntsc, connects via usb2 (I only have usb 1.1 but the connection is backwards compatible). The thing is when I mount the hard disk it is read only, (I'm mounting it on /mnt/usb) the permissions are like this:

dr-x------ 1 root root 8192 2006-09-22 18:28 usb

If I try a chmod I get:

chmod: changing permissions of `usb': Read-only file system

Any help would be much appreciated - I'd like to be able to write to my hard disk!

Last edited by otter (2009-01-26 19:51:54)

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 13,031

Re: Writing to External Hard Disk [solved]

The simplest  solution is to format your external drive with FAT, that can be read/written without problems by arch.

To write to a NTFS drive you need a special driver. ntfs-3g seems to be the most stable driver availlable.

Check ntfs-3g for an AUR package to install it.

Make sure you visit the website for the driver also :
http://www.linux-ntfs.org/

---

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Try clean chroot manager by graysky

otter

Member

From: Wroclaw

Registered: 2005-05-19

Posts: 31

Re: Writing to External Hard Disk [solved]

Thanks Lone Wolf - didn't realise NTFS (not ntsc... duh) was so tricky. Do you know the whereabouts of a decent how to for formatting this external hard drive in FAT?

chrismortimore

Member

From: Edinburgh, UK

Registered: 2006-07-15

Posts: 655

Re: Writing to External Hard Disk [solved]

Thanks Lone Wolf - didn't realise NTFS (not ntsc... duh) was so tricky. Do you know the whereabouts of a decent how to for formatting this external hard drive in FAT?

Install "dosfstools" and run "mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/[node]", and that'll do you a FAT32 filesystem.  You'll also want to change the partition table so the partition reports itself as FAT32 (I think it is type 0C, but don't hold me to that)

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brain0

Developer

From: Aachen - Germany

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 1,382

Re: Writing to External Hard Disk [solved]

Thanks Lone Wolf - didn't realise NTFS (not ntsc... duh) was so tricky. Do you know the whereabouts of a decent how to for formatting this external hard drive in FAT?

You can't use chmod on either FAT or NTFS. For both, you have to read the mount manpage (or the nftsmount or ntfs-3g manpage if you want to use ntfsmount or nfts-3g) to set the permissions (which are then valid for the whole hard drive).

Best way to go with ntfs seems to be ntfs-3g, which is available in the community repository.

otter

Member

From: Wroclaw

Registered: 2005-05-19

Posts: 31

Re: Writing to External Hard Disk [solved]

Thanks everyone - I thought I'd have a go at making the NTFS support work before I resort to formatting the Hard Drive...

I've followed the instructions on www.linux-ntfs.org and installed ntfs-3g - when I try to mount the hard-drive with

ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb

I get the following interesting error message -

Failed to mount '/dev/sda1': Operation not supported
Mount is denied because the NTFS journal file is unclean. Solutions are:
 1. Shutdown Windows properly.
 2. Click the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in the Windows taskbar
    notification area before disconnecting the device.
 3. Use 'Eject' from Windows Explorer to safely remove the device.
 4. If you ran chkdsk previously then boot Windows again which will
    automatically initialize the journal.
 5. Run 'ntfsfix' on Linux which will reset the NTFS journal.
 6. Mount the volume read-only by using the 'ro' mount option

1-4 don't seem to be relevant since I'm not running a windows partition. - I tried mounting the hard drive read only

ntfs-3g -o ro /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb
Volume is scheduled for check.
Please boot into Windows TWICE, or use the 'force' mount option.

I'm not too keen on using the 'force' mount option willy-nilly since in the manual it says "use this option only if you know what you are doing" 

Anyone got any ideas?

brain0

Developer

From: Aachen - Germany

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 1,382

Re: Writing to External Hard Disk [solved]

If you don't have a windows partition to fix the drive in case of errors, best way to go would be either a FAT32 filesystem or a *nix filesystem like ext3.

otter

Member

From: Wroclaw

Registered: 2005-05-19

Posts: 31

Re: Writing to External Hard Disk [solved]

I've formatted it in FAT32 and everything works perfectly. Thanks for all your help.