Re: good external hard drives (e.g. WD Elements)?

On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Paul Erickson<va7nt@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
  

On 07/17/2009 03:10 AM, Mike Cloaked wrote:
    

I have been using a Seagate FreeAgent Go external usb drive for this purpose
for some time and has worked flawlessly.  When I got the drive I simply
re-partitioned it with ext3 from scratch, and removed all trace of the
Windows one-touch backup system in the process.

Plugging in to F10 and F11 based systems under Gnome works just fine and I
run backups based on rsync (and rdiff-backup).

The drive is physically small and neat and the only minor issue is the short
usb lead that comes with the drive.


Hi Mike,

If you don't mind, I would appreciate a little more detail. I have been
trying to get
a 500g Segate FreeAgent Go to work, and so far, I have had no success. When
I can
get the box to recognize it, I keep getting write errors, and frequently the
drive
will not be recognized at all.

Thanks in advance.
    

No problem - First i did
yum install qtparted
and then I simply plugged in the drive and used qtparted to remove the
existing partitions and then write a single ext3 partition on the
drive. I can't remember if I had to unmount the drive after it was
plugged in but when doing these kinds of operation I usually do
tail -f /var/log/messages
and see what the device name is when a drive is plugged in. If an icon
pops up on the Gnome desktop I then right click it and select unmount
drive.

I don't remember this being a problem at all.

Once I had re-written the new partition and got the operation applied
I then removed the drive and plugged it back in and then it just
worked flawlessly after that. I partitioned it on a machine running
F10, but I seem to remember that the qparted package is actually from
F9 according to the tag on the rpm.

I guess that any other partitioning tool should in principle also work
- but certainly qtparted worked for me.

I hope that helps.

  

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
cheers, Paul - VA7NT - email: va7nt@xxxxxxxxx

"Those who hear not the music, think the dancers mad."

“Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.” - Thomas Mann

"That state which separates it's warriors from it's scholars will have it's thinking done by cowards and fighting done by fools" - Thucydides - The Pelopenisia 

"The Malice of the wicked is reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous." - Churchill