Re: Backup up Linux fileserver via Maxtor External Hard Drive

chuck gelm
2004-12-29T21:26:39Z

Eve Atley wrote:
> We recently purchased a Maxtor External Hard Drive 250gb OneTouchII. We were
> considering using this to backup data on our RedHat Linux 9 fileserver,
> hooking it directly to this fileserver. One unrelated issue is that the usb
> is probably 1.1 while specs are 2.0, though the drive does say it's 1.1
> compatible. Second, what issues do we need to resolve in order for a. the
> Linux box to read the drive, and b. formatting the unformatted external
> drive to work with the Linux box?
>
> Thanks,
> Eve

Hi, Eve:

I recently purchased a USB interface device that accepts a 2.5" hard
drive. It is USB 2.0 & 1.1 compatible, it just runs slower at v1.1
according to the documentation. I inserted one of my linux laptop
driver and plugged it into my USB port of a Slackware v9.1,
kernel 2.4.22, workstation and 'tail /var/log/messages' reported:

Dec 29 05:18:21 server kernel: hub.c: new USB device 00:10.3-6, assigned
address 3
Dec 29 05:18:22 server kernel: scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass
Storage devices
Dec 29 05:18:35 server kernel: sdb: sdb1 sdb2
Dec 29 05:18:38 server usb.agent[1535]: missing kernel or user mode
driver usb-storage

I am not sure what the last line meant but, knowing that my
1st partition is swap and the 2nd the working partition, I:

mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/hd

mounts the filesystem at /mnt/hd :-)

'lsmod' |grep -i usb shows that
usb-storage and usbcore
are installed.

As Ray mentioned, if your new drive is unpartitioned and/or unformatted;
I assume that you can use 'fdisk' to partition and mkfs.????
to create a filesystem on it.

HTH, Chuck