# external USB HDD issues



## mab1376 (Oct 4, 2007)

im running Kubuntu 7.04 and my seagate 500GB external isn't working but works fine in XP. any ideas?

also any news on 32 bit x-fi drivers?


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## DIBL (Oct 8, 2007)

NTFS or FAT32?

There's a lot in the Ubuntu forums on the topic -- a search will get you a ton of hits.  Basically, there's some tradeoff between "hotplug response" versus "solid mount with permissions".  I set mine to mount "by UUID", and as long as it's plugged in when I boot, it's solid.  Hotplug doesn't work that well when you do it this way, however.


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## mab1376 (Oct 9, 2007)

its NTFS but it reads my XP partition fine which is also NTFS.


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Oct 9, 2007)

mab1376 said:


> its NTFS but it reads my XP partition fine which is also NTFS.



Theres the problem...  Linux cannot see NTFS.


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## DIBL (Oct 9, 2007)

You need to install the ntfs-3g package from the repo, then mount the USB drive/partition as a ntfs-3g filesystem.  Here's the relevant line from my /etc/fstab file:


```
UUID=A8FC3435FC33FC5E /media/NTFSTICK ntfs-3g user,atime,rw,nodev,nosuid 0 0
```

This happens to be a USB thumbdrive, but it's the same for a USB hard drive.


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## Gruelius (Oct 13, 2007)

DIBL is 100% correct

ntfs-3g is the new driver recently developed, allows for writing to ntfs partitions without a sacrifice to a god 

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g ntfsprogs
(the ntfsprogs has a tool which 'cleans' dirty unmounts of ntfs volumes)

After doing that you will be able to read/write mount your ntfs volumes.

The line that DIBL has quoted allows you as a non super user to automatically mount the drive without any permission issues.

To find the UUID i am stumped, its a unique number but i dont know where to find it, you could probably do a bit of googling. 

The rest of the line just says the filesystem type (ntfs-3g), the options (user mountable, something, readwrite, something, something) and the other just says that it doesnt need to be fscked and checked (not needed cause its a portable drive, would slow the mounting process)


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## DIBL (Oct 14, 2007)

In a console window, enter

```
blkid
```

to see the conventional device/partition ID (/dev/hd_ or sd_) alongside the UUID for that partition, for all drives and partitions.


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