[wellylug] External USB drive

Jethro Carr jethro.carr at jethrocarr.com
Wed Oct 3 19:00:50 NZDT 2007


On Wed, 2007-10-03 at 16:27 +1200, jumbophut wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> I'm looking to buy an external USB drive for my Linux box.
> 
> Requirements:
> 
> 1. USB 2.0
> 2. Bus-powered (no external AC/DC adaptor)
> 3. Works with Linux usb-ehci and usb-storage drivers.
> 
> Nice to have, but certainly not essential:
> 4. Firewire connection
> 
> Does anybody have experience with/recommendations for drives meeting
> these requirements?  Will pretty much any drive be compatible, or are
> some Windows-only? (I have been to the vendor sites and they mostly
> say Windows / Mac compatible, but don't tend to say anything about
> Linux).

Any standard USB disk will work with Linux (I don't think I've ever seen
an external USB storage device which hasn't worked under Linux).

If you want it bus powered, you will want a 2.5" drive. 3.5" drives
require an external power source.

I typically just buy an external enclosure and then put my own standard
hard drive in it. Eg: something like this will take a standard 2.5" IDE
hard drive and can connect via USB or Firewire:
http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=346773

Once connected, they show up like any normal hard drive (you can see and
edit it with fdisk, etc). Just create a partition table and add a
partition (vfat if you want windows and mac support, otherwise any Linux
filesystem can be used).

If you buy a pre-made external drive (ie: the drive and enclosure all
built into one) they are often preformatted.


-- 
Jethro Carr

www.jethrocarr.com
www.jethrocarr.com/index.php?cms=blog

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wellylug.org.nz/pipermail/wellylug/attachments/20071003/3070f515/attachment.pgp 


More information about the wellylug mailing list