I have a 160GB WD Hard Drive in a USB 2.0 external case. I'm running Dual-boot Windows XP/SuSE 9.1

I want to know how I can enable SuSE to read my external Hard Drive. I have a lot of stuff on it, and if I can access it, then I won't need to worry about Windows anymore (I'll just use a Windows XP Virtual Machine if needed). Does anyone know how I can set SuSE to read the contents of the drive???

Is it an rpm or something that I need to install?

And how can I install the make command so that I can complie an installer for a program that doesn't have one?

You could try looking here (in the Neowin FAQs and HOWTOs):
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=206092

It will probably tell you all you need. If you run into problems, post what commands you did, and what error(s) you got.


EDIT: IDE drives are /dev/hdx while SCSI and other serial drives (USB included) are /dev/sdx

OK... I seem to still having troubles now. I tried to follow the guide that was posted here, but it didn't do anything for me. This is the message that I get now, (and have gotten all along)

Folder /media/usb-storage-oddProlificTechnologyInc-MasstorageDevice:0:0:0p1

Any ideas as to what is going on???

What did you do for a mount command that gave you that odd fault? I have never heard of a command line instruction calling a directory a "folder" before...

That drive just shows up on the desktop! I didn't mount that. I was able to figure out how to mount the drive. However, I would like to enable disk writing. Is that possible with an NTFS drive? Or do I have to convert it to the Linux format? If so, how do I do that? I've made the final decision to never use Windows again! HAHAHAHAHA
I don't WANT to have to convert my external drive since I sometimes take it with me, and connect to it other computers (that have Windows)

Short answer no with a but, long answer yes with an if...

Seriously no, you cant write to NTFS. You can try a few methods but all of them are sketchy and hacks since NTFS is closed source. An option would be to format it as FAT. Linux can access FAT just as well as its native filesystems and so can Windows. That would be your best option...

Or, if you really are not going back to Windows, you can read the data off of there, and copy it to a Linux-friendly filesystem (or save it to CD/DVD). Then make a nice Linux filesystem where your ntfs was.

This may be rather stupid, and I should already know the answer... but is it possible to convert a drive that is already NTFS to FAT? And by FAT, you mean FAT32 right?



I would need a lot of blank DVD-RW's and I mean a lot if I was to backup all my stuff to DVD

Not with Microsoft's tools. But I think that Partition Magic has the ability to do this (you lose ownership data and other NTFS-specific flags, but no big deal if you just want the data)

That might be spotty. I would split your partition and use as much free space is left to size out a chunk for FAT. Them move all your data to that and reformat the left over to FAT as well and merge them. If you cant get everything over (IE: you dont have 50% or more free space) repeate the process, moving over chunks at a time. I have done a lot of resizing and merging partitions with no data loss but have seen many people get stung by trying to alter their file system from one to the other...

I know it is possible, I just never put much trust in it. Check out Parition Commander, awesome tool to do the job and very light weight and efficient...just takes a long time.

FAT, FAT32, they are all the same file system basically, no error recovery and just junk, but they are supported by both Windows and Linux...