[PLUG] External USB 2.0 hard drives

Michael M. nixlists at writemoore.net
Sun Apr 30 17:56:29 UTC 2006


John Jason Jordan wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Apr 2006 15:35:47 -0700
> "Michael M." <nixlists at writemoore.net> dijo:
>
>   
>> I want to get an external USB 2.0 hard drive in the vicinity of 300GB.  
>> Newegg has a nice-looking simple 320GB model from the WD "essential" 
>> series that does just USB 2.0 and doesn't come with (useless for 
>> non-Windows/OSX) back-up software, yet I still can't find anything 
>> "official" saying, yes, this drive should work fine with Linux operating 
>> systems.  I'm 99% sure it should be fine, because it seems to lack 
>> proprietary gotchas, but I thought I'd ask in case there is some 
>> glaringly obvious warning sigh I'm missing?
>>     
>
> Turning the question around might be easier: Are there any USB drives
> that *don't* work with Linux? (I've heard of problems with USB 2.0, but
> once the user has USB 2.0 working, I've never heard of any drives that
> wouldn't mount.) If there are any, why won't they work?
>   

Well, people have problems with other devices (cameras, audio players 
and phones, mainly) that connect via USB 2.0, so I don't know if that 
extends to drives or not. WD makes a "NetCenter" drive (NAS) that they 
do say supports access from "Windows, Macintosh, and most Linux based 
computers," though they also say the drive can not be reformatted as 
FAT, NTFS or HFS(+) because it uses a proprietary file system. I don't 
know what that file system might be, or why they *do* explicitly state 
that this drive will work with Linux and do not explicitly state that 
other drives they make will. That's the kind of thing I find confusing. 
But maybe you're right, and all USB 2.0 hard drives just work, period.

I know someone who bought a USB CD burner that wouldn't work with her 
Vaio laptop, but it turned out that the Vaio, even though it supported 
USB, was picky about external devices, at least when it came to external 
burners. The device drivers wouldn't install properly or wouldn't work 
properly once installed. She had to return the HP burner she bought and 
get one made expressly for the laptop instead. Of course, it was 
considerably more expensive. So I guess I just don't like to assume 
everything will work with everything, even when something seems like it 
should.

-- 
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson




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