USB external harddisk

[Satish Balay]

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004, J.L. Coenders wrote:

> fdisk -l does not show the disk...
> I have bought a new WD 200 Gb disk and built it in a 3.5" Sweex external
> casing and connected it to my computer with USB 2.0.
> Is there any way to check if the USB is operational, or to find out what
> device to use?

I normally plug in the disk - and monitor /var/log/messages

For eg, I get the following after plugging in (on FC1) :

----------------
Jul 10 22:02:05 localhost kernel: hub.c: new USB device 00:1d.7-4, assigned address 2
Jul 10 22:02:05 localhost kernel: usb.c: USB device 2 (vend/prod 0xc0b/0x27e7) is not claimed by any active driver.
Jul 10 22:02:08 localhost kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Jul 10 22:02:08 localhost kernel: usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
Jul 10 22:02:08 localhost kernel: scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jul 10 22:02:08 localhost kernel:   Vendor: WDC       Model: WD1600BB-00FTA0   Rev: 15.0
Jul 10 22:02:08 localhost kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Jul 10 22:02:08 localhost kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.
Jul 10 22:02:09 localhost kernel: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Jul 10 22:02:09 localhost kernel: sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 24x/24x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Jul 10 22:02:09 localhost kernel: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
Jul 10 22:02:09 localhost kernel: Attached scsi disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Jul 10 22:02:09 localhost kernel: SCSI device sda: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
Jul 10 22:02:09 localhost kernel:  sda: sda1
Jul 10 22:02:09 localhost kernel: inserting floppy driver for 2.4.22-1.2197.nptl
Jul 10 22:02:09 localhost kernel: Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
Jul 10 22:02:09 localhost kernel: FDC 0 is a National Semiconductor PC87306
Jul 10 22:02:10 localhost devlabel: devlabel service started/restarted
-----------------


The following line tells me the hdd is properly detected - as sda, and
there is 1 partition sda1:

Jul 10 22:02:09 localhost kernel:  sda: sda1

Now I can format/use the disk.

Satish