[CentOS] mounting & partitioning Seagate FreeAgent external HD

Thu Jan 3 15:28:04 UTC 2008
Tim McGeary <tmm8 at Lehigh.EDU>

James A. Peltier wrote:
> James A. Peltier wrote:
>> Tim McGeary wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
[snip]
>>>
>>> I can see the device in my /proc/bus/usb/devices file, but fdisk -l 
>>> doesn't show it at all.  I was trying to mount and partition it using 
>>> Webmin, but I can't figure out the device name I need to give it to 
>>> mount and partition it.  How is the best way to figure that out?  
>>> This particular server is running CentOS 4.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Tim
>>>
>> If it's a brand new drive it will not have a valid partition table. A 
>> simple sudo /sbin/fdisk -l will show all drives and their partition 
>> tables.  The one with an invalid partition table is the one you're 
>> interested in.
>>
> Sorry, just read again and noticed that fdisk did not show you anything. :(

Actually, your first email made me double check this to see if I was 
missing something and I was (or maybe it really wasn't there initially). 
  So what I see now is:

Disk /dev/sda: 750.1 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

    Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1             1     91201 732572001    7  HPFS/NTFS

This is definitely the drive.  So when I try to use Webmin to mount and 
partition device /dev/sda (and also tried /dev/sda2) as a New Linux 
Native Filesystem (ext3), I get the error of:

Failed to save mount : Mount failed :
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda,
        or too many mounted file systems

So I'm guessing I'm using the wrong file system type.  What should I use 
instead of ext3?

Thanks,
Tim

Tim McGeary '99, '06G
Senior Systems Specialist
Lehigh University
610-758-4998
tim.mcgeary at lehigh.edu
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