Ubuntu

external hard drive not recognized

Asked by Sean Carey

Today I just bought an 80gb western digital hard drive and an enclosure. I hooked everything up plugged it in and it doesn't show up. I'm running 7.04 on my desktop and
I also tried it on my laptop which is running 6.10 and still nothing.
PS I'm a noob

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Cesare Tirabassi
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williamts99 (williamts99) said : 		#1

You probably just need to format the drive, which can be done using gparted. After you install gparted, it will be available in the menu System>Admin>GNOME partition editor.

Best Regards,
Williamts99

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Sean Carey (papermusic) said : 		#2

thanks, I'm on a borrowed pc now so I cannot try it until I get my USB wi-fi working on my linux machines which is another question I have on the message board.
-S

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williamts99 (williamts99) said : 		#3

Just an FYI, gparted is available to be installed from the installation cd, no network required.

Best Regards,
Williamts99

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Sean Carey (papermusic) said : 		#4

I have gparted on my laptop now. It doesn't see the external hard drive when I plug in the usb. I've rrefreshed the list turned it off/on etc and still nothing.

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Sean Carey (papermusic) said : 		#5

i think i found the HD its all unallocated space so this is it. so I'm creating the partition, but what should I format it as? ext3? fat32?
thanks

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Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said : 		#6

Give this command in a terminal with your external HD off:

lsusb

Now switch it ON, and give the command again.
What is the difference between the two?
Check also what the kernel is reporting with a "dmesg | tail -" command.

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Best Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said : 		#7

What are you using the HD for? Just linux -> use ext3; sharing data with win-> use fat32 (or ntfs and install ntfs-3g).

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Sean Carey (papermusic) said : 		#8

fat32 worked. big thanks to all who chimed in.
-Sean
Ubuntu FTW!