[SOLVED] Cant write to USB external hard drive
I have just bought a Philips 250gb USB 2.0 hard drive but when i plug it in mepis detects it as sdb1 and places an icon on the desktop for it. Then if i open it i can read its contents. However, I cannot modify anything on the drive.
The fstab looks like this
# Pluggable devices are handled by uDev, they are not in fstab
/dev/hda8 / auto defaults,noatime 1 1
/dev/hda7 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devmode=0666 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
# Dynamic entries below
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 ntfs-3g noauto,users 0 0
/dev/hda6 /mnt/hda6 vfat,ext3,ext2,reiserfs noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1 ntfs-3g noauto,users 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy vfat,ext2 noauto,users,exec,rw 0 0
Now if I try booting the pc up with the drive plugged in there is no icon on the desktop but i can see it in konqueror and its its shown as sda1 but if i try to access it or mount it from konqueror i just get the error
Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
Failed to write lock '/dev/sda1': Resource temporarily unavailable
Error opening partition device: Resource temporarily unavailable
Failed to startup volume: Resource temporarily unavailable
Failed to mount '/dev/sda1': Resource temporarily unavailable
and the the fstab is showing at this point the following:
# Pluggable devices are handled by uDev, they are not in fstab
/dev/hda8 / auto defaults,noatime 1 1
/dev/hda7 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devmode=0666 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
# Dynamic entries below
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 ntfs-3g noauto,users 0 0
/dev/hda6 /mnt/hda6 vfat,ext3,ext2,reiserfs noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1 ntfs-3g noauto,users 0 0
/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 ntfs-3g noauto,users 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy vfat,ext2 noauto,users,exec,rw 0 0
I tested it on a windows pc and it works with full read/write access. It is formatted in NTFS but mepis has ntfs3g and should be able to write to it. Its also showing in KDiskfree as an ntfs3g device.
can someone help me to get this working as fully read write.
[SOLVED] Got it working
Got it working.
I don't understand whats wrong but it seems to be a bug in mepis 6.5 because I found that if I boot the PC up with the USB hard drive connected and then open KDiskFree and mount the /mnt/sda1 device from there by right clicking its entry in the list of devices.
I can then use the desktop icon to open the device and I have full read/write access.
It seems that if you mount the device using the desktop icon it only mounts as read only.
Is this a problem that can maybe be fixed in the next release and maybe it might be a good idea in the meantime if this is mentioned under the storage section in the wiki?.
I'll let a dev decide this in case its not a bug.