Hello, I recently acquired a Seagate USB external HDD but could not get it to function on my Gentoo Linux. Specifically, the drivers and commands that I used were as follows:
modprobe sg modprobe usb-storage mount -t usbfs none /proc/bus/usb At this point, according to the kernel log, the drive was recognized but there were errors in reading and so I could not finally mount the NTFS file system that the drive contained. Fdisk could not recognize the drive. Using a Gentoo Live DVD to boot Linux, the drive was recognized without any read errors. In this case fdisk could recognize the drive. I then attempted to reformat the drive with an ext2 file system but the format failed. After reading bad on-line reviews for this particular Seagate USB HDD, I returned it for a refund. Now I want to try a Western Digital USB HDD but I need to know exactly what drivers and commands can be used to successfully recognize and mount the WD drive. My USB thumb drives can all be successfully recognized with the sg and usb-storage modules (as shown in the commands above). Is this all I would need to mount a Western Digital USB HDD or is there some other module that needs to be loaded? As I mentioned, the Gentoo Live DVD was able to recognize the drive. How was this done? Internet searches only provide comments from Ubuntu or Fedora users stating that "I plugged it in and it worked," which are next to useless. I need to know what modules (drivers) and basic commands can get a Western Digital USB external HDD to successfully mount. Frank Peters
