Buffalo USB 2.0 External Drives

Ogre · External Since: Jun 04, 2007 Posts: 20

I went into Fry's last Friday (a rather dangerous thing to do) and saw a
nice sale. Buffalo 500 Gig USB 2.0 external drives for $110. I picked
up two. It comes preformatted as fat 32 and the included management CD
does not support ext2 (or any other native linux file system). Because
of limitations with mounting vfat on a Linux box, I nuked the existing
partition table and divided into one NTFS partition and one ext2
partition (half the drive for each). FYI, I used windows XP to redo the
partition table, leaving half the drive unused, then moved it to my
linux box to create the ext2 partition.

Everything seems to be working perfectly on all my systems, though I
don't dare use any of the included tools with it now since it probably
has some kind of automatic recovery system that will think the drive has
been corrupted.

A pretty good price for a decent and simple backup unit.

--
Ogre

Rikishi 42 · External Since: Oct 27, 2005 Posts: 177

On 2007-08-08, Ogre <rossz.DeleteThis@sonic.net> wrote:

> ... I nuked the existing partition table and divided into one NTFS
> partition and one ext2 partition (half the drive for each). FYI, I used
> windows XP to redo the partition table, leaving half the drive unused,
> then moved it to my linux box to create the ext2 partition.
Exactly the safest way to do it. I'd have use FAT for Windows, though.
Easier to use from Linux.

> Everything seems to be working perfectly on all my systems, though I
> don't dare use any of the included tools with it now since it probably
> has some kind of automatic recovery system that will think the drive has
> been corrupted.
I don't think they'd just start correcting without asking something.
Alltough...

Still, that's not the point of that CD anyway. They're coasters (sp?), just
like those that come with most printers today.

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Ogre · External Since: Jun 04, 2007 Posts: 20

Rikishi 42 wrote:
> On 2007-08-08, Ogre <rossz.TakeThisOut@sonic.net> wrote:
>
>> ... I nuked the existing partition table and divided into one NTFS
>> partition and one ext2 partition (half the drive for each). FYI, I used
>> windows XP to redo the partition table, leaving half the drive unused,
>> then moved it to my linux box to create the ext2 partition.

> Exactly the safest way to do it. I'd have use FAT for Windows, though.
> Easier to use from Linux.

For some odd reason winxp pro didn't give me the option of choosing FAT,
which is my preference for external drives -- just in case I want to
access it from linux.

--
Ogre

Doug Mitton · External Since: Oct 14, 2005 Posts: 37

Ogre <rossz.RemoveThis@sonic.net> wrote:

>Rikishi 42 wrote:
>> On 2007-08-08, Ogre <rossz.RemoveThis@sonic.net> wrote:
>>
>>> ... I nuked the existing partition table and divided into one NTFS
>>> partition and one ext2 partition (half the drive for each). FYI, I used
>>> windows XP to redo the partition table, leaving half the drive unused,
>>> then moved it to my linux box to create the ext2 partition.
>
>> Exactly the safest way to do it. I'd have use FAT for Windows, though.
>> Easier to use from Linux.
>
>For some odd reason winxp pro didn't give me the option of choosing FAT,
>which is my preference for external drives -- just in case I want to
>access it from linux.

I have recently run into this issue as well. Apparenly Microsoft has
put a 32Gig limit on FAT32 partitions. To create one larger I was
forced to use Linux tools.

Basically I:

- Create partitions with Linux fdisk and use type "b" for FAT32.
- Format the partitions with:
`mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n YourVolName -v /dev/sdax`
(Where "YourVolName" and "sdax" reflect your requirements.)

Hope this helps.
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Rikishi 42 · External Since: Oct 27, 2005 Posts: 177

On 2007-08-09, Ogre <rossz RemoveThis @sonic.net> wrote:

>>> ... I nuked the existing partition table and divided into one NTFS
>>> partition and one ext2 partition (half the drive for each). FYI, I used
>>> windows XP to redo the partition table, leaving half the drive unused,
>>> then moved it to my linux box to create the ext2 partition.
>
>> Exactly the safest way to do it. I'd have use FAT for Windows, though.
>> Easier to use from Linux.
>
> For some odd reason winxp pro didn't give me the option of choosing FAT,
> which is my preference for external drives -- just in case I want to
> access it from linux.

Isn't that strange? I was reformatting two pocket drives this afternoon, and
discovered the same thing. Must be linked to the size, because I did a flash
drive recently, with FAT.

I must have formatted the previous HD ones under Linux or Win2000, becasue I
don't remember hitting that behaviour.

Still, maybe it was for the best. When I used Yast's partitioner to reformat
them, I discovered they worked *without* a partition. Nothing, none, nada.

Funny, how they all do such weird things in their devices, when doing it
right is easy...

--
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
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