[wellylug] Mounting a USB HDD that was partitioned with MacOS X

[Jes Hall]

On Tuesday 26 April 2005 17:20, Gordon Paynter wrote:
> Hi all:
>
> Does anyone know how to mount an external USB hard drive that has been
> partitioned with MacOS X?  I have a non-bootable external USB HDD that I
> use on my iBook, which has a single large partition (though Mac's sometimes
> make other, off, hidden partitions, in my experience).
>
>
> I have compiled verything I need into the kernel, I think, including SCSI
> and USB mass storage.  When I plug the drive in and activate it, it shows
> up in my logs.  Here's what's in the kernel log (wrapped my me for
> display):
>
> Apr 26 17:10:41 pukeko kernel:
>     Attached scsi disk sda at scsi2, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
> Apr 26 17:10:41 pukeko kernel:
>     usb-storage: device scan complete
> Apr 26 17:10:41 pukeko scsi.agent[7324]:
>     sd_mod: loaded sucessfully (for disk)
> Apr 26 17:10:41 pukeko udev[7337]:
>     creating device node '/dev/sda'
>
> It looks good, but I can't figure out how to mount it.  Here;s what mount
> reports (no matter what partition number I try instead of sda1):
>
> # mount -t hfs /dev/sda1 /laser
> mount: special device /dev/sda1 does not exist
>
> Note that I'm mounting as HFS, even though I know the partition is HFS+. 
> Both are compile in the kernel.  Fdisk isn't any help:
>
> # fdisk /dev/sda
> Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF
> disklabel [snip - lots of warnings]
>
> I used to run debian on my ibook, and I used a program called mac-fdisk to
> manipulate the partition table.  Is that what I need here?  Unfortunately,
> it doesn't seem to be available via Debian on x86.
>
> Any help appreciated.
> Gordon

I mount my hfsplus formatted iPod as an external usb disk. You actually need 
to mount /dev/sda and not sda1, and to be able to see the full directory 
structure you'll need to have support for hfsplus in your kernel (Most 
distros actually have support for this as a module by default, try 'modprobe 
hfsplus' :))

Fdisk wont be able to see the partition table and you wont be able to fsck the 
drive, but the hfsplus kernel driver gives you basic read/write support.

So, I use

mount /dev/sda /mnt/foo -t hfsplus

Hope that helps ! :)

-- 
JH

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