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Trouble with USB hard-drive (Read 2515 times)

slackline

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Trouble with USB hard-drive
October 11, 2008, 08:15:36 pm
Wondering if any M$-Windows bods could suggest some pointers.

Have extracted a Segate 200Gb HD from a friends computer with a view to turning it into an external USB HD.  Moved it over fine, the jumper is on 'cable select', and when plugged into XP or Vista the drive is seen as its listed under Device Manager -> USB and Device Manager -> Hard Drives.

Unfortunately its not getting mounted automatically.  Found a thread about changing Logical Disk Manager Settings but no joy there.  Have tried setting the jumpers to 'Slave' and 'Master' but no joy.

Read around that it might be that the caddy isn't supplying enough power, but...

...I bought it home and have plugged it into my linux laptop and its mounted fine.  The file system is indicated as being 'SFS' which could be any number of things, SAN File System Smary File System and a load of other network File system types that use the same acronym but I doubt its that since its come from a working XP installation where it was either a master or slave drive.

Anyone experience with this, or have any tips on how to get SFS mounted under XP and vista?  Apparently it took some playing around when the HD was installed in the PC from which I've extracted it, but the person who's computer it is didn't do it and doesn't know what was done to make it work.

Cheers

slack

slackline

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#1 Re: Trouble with USB hard-drive
October 11, 2008, 08:37:28 pm
Perhaps a little hasty on the file-system type there since I've just plugged it into my desktop and it won't mount it saying that it doesn't recognise NTFS file system (I've not set NTFS support in my linux kernel on the desktop).

So it looks like my laptop running linux can mount a native Windows file system, but both Windows XP and Vista fail, strange  :-\

Jim

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#2 Re: Trouble with USB hard-drive
October 11, 2008, 08:42:51 pm
what machine did you format the drive on?

slackline

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#3 Re: Trouble with USB hard-drive
October 11, 2008, 09:09:30 pm
I didn't format it.  Its come from a computer that I've never seen before and was put together for my friend by someone else.  This drive was an extra drive that was added to the system at a later date and apparently required "some fiddling" to get it working but because the person who's computer it is didn't do it (their friend did) they've no idea what worked.

I reckon its almost definately NTFS as I've just added support for that to the kernel on my desktop system that said it couldn't mount 'ntfs filesystem', rebooted and can now mount the drive on my (linux) desktop as well as my (linux) laptop, but it just doesn't want to play under windows (although it was working in the system from which it was extracted).  When I try to populate the device (under the 'Volumes' Tab after selecting properties under Device Manager -> Disk -> ST3200822A) it lists it as being 'Master Boot Record' but 0Mb in size for all subsequent fields.

Update - Tried going through these instructions but when I get to Step 3 (under 'How to create amounted drive') I'm told that Disk 1 (which is the correct device as I can select 'properties' and its the Seagate drive I expect to find) is Dynamic and Foriegn and no partitions are showing, despite being able to mount the partition under Linux and it being NTFS (at least its mounted as NTFS).

Very strange  :shrug:
« Last Edit: October 11, 2008, 09:29:34 pm by slack---line »

slackline

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#4 Re: Trouble with USB hard-drive
October 11, 2008, 09:30:21 pm
Anyone any favourite M$-windows forums they use that they could recommend, their own help center hasn't proved very helpful so far.

slackline

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#5 Re: Trouble with USB hard-drive
October 11, 2008, 09:40:16 pm
Solved it (almost)  :thumbsup:

Had to select 'Disk Management' from the Computer Management app, then right-click on the drive that was listed as type 'foreign' and from the menu select 'Import Foreign Disks'  They're both seen as NTFS and mounted.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to remember these settings when I unplug and plug the drive back in and I then have to 'Reactivate Disk' manually.  I've set the Logical disk management to be automatic and both services are running (see link in first post), but no joy.  Any ideas

Hopefully it won't be too different on the other windows laptop my friends partner has which runs vista (tips on how to do this under vista are welcome if anyone has experience).  :whistle:
« Last Edit: October 11, 2008, 09:52:38 pm by slack---line »

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#6 Re: Trouble with USB hard-drive
October 11, 2008, 09:58:36 pm
Have you tried re-formatting the drive once it's fully recognised?

slackline

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#7 Re: Trouble with USB hard-drive
October 11, 2008, 10:10:32 pm
Have you tried re-formatting the drive once it's fully recognised?

Had thought of that option, but its contents aren't mine and I don't have enough space to back it up somewhere in the interim period (plus if it all went tits up I don't think they have a back up anywhere else).

I've almost solved it though, its just that the drive has to be manually 'reactivated' which isn't ideal.

Hopefully under vista I'll only have to do this once and it will work, but XP isn't playing ball, despite setting logical volume management to automatic and ensuring that both components are running (and thats the services that handles mounting and assigning drive letters to newly attached devices).

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#8 Re: Trouble with USB hard-drive
October 11, 2008, 11:49:04 pm
I can't claim to know this as an expert, but when you mention 'SAN' seems to indicate a proprietary filesystem that can be a bit rubbish.

The reason I say this are that I own a Netgear SC101, a powered, network attached caddy that hold a pair of IDE drives. It has to format the drive sitself and uses this Z-SAN format and onboard software to work them. They're notoriously bad for not being found on the network or just crashing... I'm on the way to buying a new external USB drive to hold the remaining data on mine and getting it on ebay.

slackline

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#9 Re: Trouble with USB hard-drive
October 12, 2008, 08:05:27 am
I can't claim to know this as an expert, but when you mention 'SAN' seems to indicate a proprietary filesystem that can be a bit rubbish.

The reason I say this are that I own a Netgear SC101, a powered, network attached caddy that hold a pair of IDE drives. It has to format the drive sitself and uses this Z-SAN format and onboard software to work them. They're notoriously bad for not being found on the network or just crashing... I'm on the way to buying a new external USB drive to hold the remaining data on mine and getting it on ebay.

SAN was a guess, as under linux the filesystem was listed as 'SFS' which is an ancronym used for serveral different filesystems (SAN being one, Smart File System being another, and there are more).  As it is, the drive is partitioned as NTFS, a native windows format.  I reached this conclusion as initially the drive wouldn't mount on my desktop linux computer.  Adding NTFS support into and recompiling the kernel allowed me to mount the drive on that computer.

I've also subsequently managed to mount it under Windows (where it too is shown aas NTFS), the problem I now have is that this has to be done manually as the logical volume management isn't behaving and doing it automatically when the drive is conneted.

Cheers for the input people, giving the drive back in an hour or so, so will have to go with advising the manual method and do more research.

 

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