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Re: [LUG] Buffalo HDD

 


On 26/09/12 19:33, Peter M Le Mare wrote:

On 26/09/12 17:16, bad apple wrote:
On 26/09/12 14:32, Peter M Le Mare wrote:
This is what I got-

  wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sd14:0:0:0,
        missing codepage or helper program, or other error
        (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might
        need a /sbin/mount.<type> helper program)
        In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
        dmesg | tail  or so

I am not sure I understand this. I am not sure I put the sdx1 number
correctly as my number is a lot different to your example. I put
sd14:0:0:0 the number after the entry.

How do I enter /sbin/mount.?buffalo? helper program? Do I put sudo or
something first? do actually write helper programme? what is syslog
how do write the dmesg | ?tail? or so?

A long time ago I used to use DOS before windows. I managed that OK?
Sorry to sound so stupid.

Typical, I was even going to include the ex-fat bit as well just in case
but thought I should try and keep my post length down...

As Martin has said, you need ex-fat support:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:relan/exfat
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fuse-exfat exfat-utils

And then reboot. At this point, your system understands exfat and your
buffalo should just automount itself.

If not, then the mount command should take the form of something like:
"sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/buffalo"

The critical bit is the "sdb1", which depending on your system, could be
"sdc1", "sdd1", etc. As you can hopefully see, the only variable is the
third letter which increments by one alphabetically depending on how
many disks you have in your system (and usb thumb drives, SD cards, etc
- any form of storage unit counts). So your first hard drive (presumably
your boot and OS drive) is going to be sda, your second drive is sdb,
your third sdc, and so on. If you type "sudo fdisk -l" your system will
spit out a summary of your attached drives. On mine:

Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
/dev/sda1            2048  3907028991  1953513472   83  Linux
Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
/dev/sdb1   *        2048   217667583   108832768   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2       217669630   234440703     8385537    5  Extended
/dev/sdb5 217669632 234440703 8385536 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
/dev/sdc1               1      409639      204819+  ee  GPT
/dev/sdc2   *      409640   297245583   148417972   af  HFS / HFS+
/dev/sdc3       297507728   600242103   151367188   af  HFS / HFS+
/dev/sdc4       600504248   958175855   178835804    7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
Disk /dev/sdd: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
/dev/sdd1   *        2048      206847      102400    7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdd2          206848   245762047   122777600    7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdd3       245762048   976773119   365505536   83  Linux

As you can see, I have a lot of disks (windows/linux/mac) - precisely 4,
as the last one is sdd. You'll *probably* have two disks listed: your
main hard drive and the buffalo. Your hard drive will be /dev/sda(1,2,3)
and your buffalo, if it's the second disk in your machine, is going to
be /dev/sdb1. Make sense? Your mount command, if you have to do it
manually, is very likely to be: "sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/buffalo"

The warning message you got was completely normal (your OS is missing
exfat drivers) and it's advising you to read your system logs - just
type "dmesg" to do this, you don't need to pipe it through tail.

A long time ago I used to use DOS before windows. I managed that OK?
Sorry to sound so stupid.

Didn't we all! You don't sound stupid at all my friend, we can't all be
system administrators or programmer gurus. To be honest, you shouldn't
even need to know this: ideally, a good operating system should be able
to detect your drive, politely and helpfully tell you that you are
missing a filesystem driver and then download and install it for you.
Sadly, even linux doesn't do this currently.

Anyway, good luck - just installing the exfat drivers should sort you
out completely and it's unlikely you'll need to mess with the cmd prompt
again.

Regards

Thanks Martin and bad apple. All this seems reasonable and will be a great help. One last (I hope) request; is it possible to re-save these in a normal mp3 and mp4 (a few are in VOB) without the exFAT so that it can be read by anything. There is plenty of room on the hdd so I could then delete those in the exFAT. Maybe this exFAT is some sort of format on the whole disk but if I access it maybe I can use fdisk or a partition tool. Again I also used fdisk long ago: one had to format your own disc in those days - they came unformatted. I am assuming from what you say that Linux contains fdisk facility.

Thanks for kind words. I mostly understand hardware but all software seems to send me around the bend.

You'll want to reformat the drive as FAT32 but if you do that, the contents of the drive will be destroyed.

You need to copy the drive contents onto your main hard drive, launch "Disk Utility" from within Ubuntu, select the exFat drive and click on format. Once Drive Utility has finished, you can copy the original contents of the drive back.

Martin


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