External harddrive via USB

[Matt Domsch]

On Sat, Feb 16, 2008 at 09:13:26AM -0700, Reid Rivenburgh wrote:
> On Feb 16, 2008 8:59 AM, Steven Stern <subscribed-lists at sterndata.com> wrote:
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> > On 02/16/2008 09:19 AM, Mike Chambers wrote:
> > | These external HD's that are out there, like a seagate 250G I saw at
> > | Staples, can they work just fine with Fedora 8 and up?

I got one of these for Christmas, and with a Fedora 8 updated kernel
released that week, yes, it "just worked".

> In addition to that good advice, check out the thread I started here
> with the subject "USB external hard drive disconnecting".  I always
> figured external drives would just work, but apparently some models
> are programmed to go to sleep.  This has been causing me some grief.
> You can google for "Seagate USB external drive linux" to read about
> some other troubles with that particular brand.  There are solutions,
> but it's been more of a hassle than I expected.  Mine is a Cavalry 500
> GB, by the way.

Removable external disks are now handled generically in the kernel.
The kernel will issue a start-disk command when it tries to do I/O to
it if it sees that the device has gone to sleep in the meantime.  The
Fedora 8 kernel from around Christmas implemented this feature, so I
didn't have to do anything special to solve this.

-- 
Matt Domsch
Linux Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO
linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux