WD external drive

[iironjade]

Mint 4.0 seems to be doing everything except allowing me to access my Western Digital external hard drive. Normally, installing ntfs-3g cures this but not today. I can't even open the drive read only, let alone create files or folders etc. Am I missing something obvious or is there a solution everyone knows but me?

[McLovin]

try unplugging and replugging th drive, that's what I have to do sometimes, then it automounts for me.

[iironjade]

If only. I get the "cannot mount drive" message.

[paradigmX]

I don't have a link but I read an Article about WD purposely making some of their external Hard Drives compatable with windows only

If your lucky and it won't mount because it wasn't properly unmounted previously from either Linux or Windows, you might be able to force mount it, though force mounting might cause data loss, so if you have anything important on it i would transfer the files off with windows or something

Code: Select all

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/<Your HD> /media/<your mount point> -o force

[iironjade]

Force mounting hasn't worked so far but I'll give it another try. This drive was perfectly accessible with Ubuntu 7.04 but not with 7.10. It was also ok with the Mint and Ubuntu Live cds but not when installed. It's not life threatening but it's an annoying little quirk.

[MagnusB]

Have you tried pmount?

Code: Select all

pmount /dev/sxx disk

This mount /dev/sxx to /media/disk. This does NOT require sudo

[seba]

My WD 320GB external (MyBook Essential USB 2.0) works flawless so it's not necessarily a WD/Mint issue

[iironjade]

The problem appears to have been solved. How, I don't know, but Mint is now running perfectly. Thanks for your suggestions.

[mikpap]

The problem appears to have been solved. How, I don't know, but Mint is now running perfectly. Thanks for your suggestions.

Do you have a dual boot machine with either XP or Vista? In that case if you hot unplug the external hdd when you are using MS OS you get this message when you boot into linux. If you encounter the same problem once again, try booting into XP (or Vista) and use Safely Remove feature (after having connected your external HDD to your pc) in order to disconnect your external HDD. After that boot into linux. I had the same problem several times because I used to hot unplug my external HDDs.

[iironjade]

Completely forgot to mention that this laptop is dual booted with XP. Today was the first time I booted XP and clearly that's what fixed it. I feel like seven kinds of idiot.

[yamawho]

I don't have a link but I read an Article about WD purposely making some of their external Hard Drives compatable with windows only

I read some recently but it was for Seagate external drives ...

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... nubs-linux