Question

How to set up USB Hard Drive on Linux?

Asked by: Diplomat

I am new to Linux and I'm trying to set up a Linksys USB Hard Drive on my Red Hat Linux computer. Under 'System Tools', 'Hardware Browser', I can see the USB drive as sda1 under /dev/sda.
But when I use 'System Tools', 'Disk Management' I don't see that USB drive but the normal hard drive and floppy drive. Therefore I couldn't use Disk Management to mount it.
Does anyone know what else do I need to do. I want to copy some files from the normal hard drive to my USB drive.

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Asked On
2005-01-04 at 00:19:46ID21260793
Tags

usb

,

linux

,

drive

,

hard

Topics

Linux

,

Linux Distributions

,

Red Hat Linux

Participating Experts
4
Points
100
Comments
10

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Answers

 

by: rindiPosted on 2005-01-04 at 01:57:08ID: 12950839

Can you please post your /etc/fstab file here?

Thanx

 

by: DiplomatPosted on 2005-01-04 at 02:59:06ID: 12951062

Helli Rindi:
The following is the content of the file /etc/fstab.
What do you think that could be?

...............................................................................................................................

LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/hda3               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy             auto    noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

 

by: rindiPosted on 2005-01-04 at 03:13:09ID: 12951109

OK, now create a folder /mnt/USB:

mkdir /mnt/USB

then add the following line to /etc/fstab (you have to be root to do both)

/dev/sda              /mnt/USB                auto             noauto,owner,kuzu         0 0

You should now be able to mount your USB drive with the following command:

mount /dev/sda



Please check if that works and post any errors you may get.

 

by: rindiPosted on 2005-01-04 at 03:15:08ID: 12951116

Sorry, replace

/dev/sda

in both cases with

/dev/sda1

 

by: wesly_chenPosted on 2005-01-04 at 08:21:57ID: 12953538

> Linksys USB Hard Drive
What kind of filesystem on the USB hard drive?
For FAT32, you can use mount command first.
As root:
mkdir /mnt/usb; mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb

If this succeed, then you can use rindi's method to put it in /etc/fstab.

Wesly

 

by: jleviePosted on 2005-01-04 at 15:26:22ID: 12957609

rindi's addition to fstab will work regardless of what file system is on the USB drive, as long as it is one that Linux supports. The "auto" type causes the system to pick a matching file system type (FAT, VFAT, EXT2. EXT3, etc).

 

by: DiplomatPosted on 2005-01-04 at 21:50:02ID: 12959639

Thanks for all your inputs. However I have to award the points to rindi since those instructions were good enough to help me install this usb drive.
I just wonder why Linux doesn't have anything easy and simple plug n'play like the Windows counterpart, where all I have to do is to plug the USB drive and it was instantly recognized.

 

by: rindiPosted on 2005-01-04 at 22:13:29ID: 12959706

Thanx, Diplomat.

In Windows you still often have to provide a driver CD or Disk. Linux has the disadvantage that the hardware manufacturers usually forget about making drivers for linux and don't give out the info to the community so it can build it's own drivers, or when this does happen the product is vintage.

 

by: wesly_chenPosted on 2005-01-05 at 10:14:42ID: 12964667

> why Linux doesn't have anything easy and simple plug n'play like the Windows counterpart
For USB disk, I tested on Mandrake 10.1, SuSE 9.x and Fedora Croe3, they are all plug&play.
When you plug-in the USB disk, those Linux will pop-up a window of the content of USB disk like M$ Windows.

Wesly

 

by: r0dzillaPosted on 2005-06-06 at 07:26:23ID: 14153446

Both Gnome and KDE can automount usb drives now.

If your linux system does not support it, then you need to install a few packages.

For Gnome (I am using 2.10), you will need to install dbus, hald and Gnome-Volume-Manager.  Once you have these installed and have dbus and hald setup to run via init scripts, then you need to configure Gnome.

In Gnome, click on the 'Desktop' menu, then go to 'Preferences', then finally to 'Removable Drives and Media'.  Configure the settings to your liking.  Once you plug-in a usb drive, an icon for the drive will appear on the desktop.  You can also have it open a window with the contents, but I prefer just the icon on the desktop.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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