Western Digital 500GB My Book problem

[gleslie]

I'm trying to install a WD 500GB My Book external USB drive, which is preformatted as one big FAT32 partition, but I'm having no luck.

I've verified that the drive works fine just plugging it in on a WinXP machine, and I've verified that my SuSE Linux 9.3 machine can read and mount a USB 1GB keychain-style "flash" disk. But the My Book drive just shuts down after about 30 seconds with no message and no results when I plug it in to the linux machine. It doesn't appear as /dev/sda, or in /dev/disk/by-id, -label, etc., or in /media. Nothing is logged in /var/logs/messages, and while I don't understand the output of dmesg, nothing seems to indicate a failure.

Is it just a problem with the size of the FAT32 drive? I can't format it to anything else, since it's not showing up with a "dev" reference. Any ideas?

Gregg

[FlesHBoX]

I picked up the 250 gig version yesterday and I am having this same problem and have not been able to find any information online so far.

Update: I decided to try rebooting with the drive plugged in. After spending 5 minutes trying to figure out why it wouldn't turn on at all now, (including plugging it into my wifes windows laptop) only to discover that somehow in the middle of rebooting the power cord came unplugged from the powersupply... yes, I work tech support... I missed the FIRST step, make sure it is plugged in

Anyways, you might try rebooting with it plugged into the computer and see if that helps

[SwimminSasquatch]

A 500GB partition? It is my understanding that the max size for a FAT32 partition is around 28GB.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems

[BrentR]

I just got one a couple of days ago, and I only today started reformatting it. It seems to take a long time to detect (using knoppix), and it seems to be taking a long time to format. It almost seems as if it's stuck on USB 1.1. Try using a copy of knoppix and see if it helps. It seems to be working for me, so far.

Also, the max volume size for FAT32 is 2^40 (or something like 8 terrabytes). I believe the limit for FAT32 that people normally cite is imposed by Microsoft's software.

BR

[yourname3232]

The limit of the FAT filesystem is 8tb, the limit of microsoft's scandisk is 124.55gb. Windows 2000 and XP can only create FAT32 filesystems of 32gb.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Al...on_Table#FAT32

To original poster:
I don't know what's whong, it should work. Does 'dmesg' mention the drive being sensed at all?

[gerar]

Gregg,

I just bought one of these drives and I wanted to ask you if you had any luck with it. I saw that you had installed its drivers... can you tell me where did you find them? I couldn't find them in WD...

Thanks,

Gerardo

[bigtomrodney]

All of these early problems with these drives have disappeared. MyBooks are simply Mass Storage devices and are correctly identified and mounted by any recent linux systems. I have two of these devices and they have always worked 100% for me.