Convincing Ubuntu 7.10 that I own my 2nd HD...

Alright, definitely not sure where the problem is, but on my ThinkPad T40, I am running Ubuntu 7.10 (upgraded from 7.04) and it says it is fully updated. I recently purchased the HD tray for ThinkPads that allows you to remove the optical drive and replace it with a 2nd HD. Problem is that I can read the info but not write to it (when it was NTFS) and now that I have used GParted to delete its sole partition and create a new EXT3 partition, I can't even mount it, even though GParted still sees it.

Under NTFS...
Ubuntu would tell me that I was not the drive's owner (I am...) and therefore had insufficient rights to write to the drive. Attempts to enable internal NTFS support were defeated by the option simply being grayed out. When connecting externally, I could at least read and write to the drive.

Under EXT3...
Just like above. Ubuntu does not recognize it, though GParted does.

My aim here is to be able to use this drive internally, even if it means making it unreadable under Windows. If this is a matter of insufficient user rights, how do I gain them? I am the sole user of this computer. If it is a formatting issue, how do I correctly format for Ubuntu? I don't need to be able to take out the drive and use it in XP, so if the required format prevents this, it is not an issue.

 

This is completely a guess, but would it have something to do with your hardware and not Ubuntu? Don't Thinkpads have drive encryption and protections? Try to disable all that stuff (from BIOS?) and then try.

 

I couldn't find an option for that in the BIOS. Btw, this second HD did not come with the T40; it's a salvage that was used to upgrade a laptop a couple of years ago. I have been using it without issue on XP machines (externally).

Maybe this will help: "root" is labeled as the owner of the drive.

 

I took the 2nd HD and reconnected it to Win XP, deleted the partition, reformatted anew with NTFS and labeled it "Merkaba EX". Placed it back into my secondary HD tray in my T40 and attempted to mount under Ubuntu 7.10. It tells me this:

[mntent]: line 11 in /etc/fstab is bad
[mntent]: line 12 in /etc/fstab is bad
mount: can't find /media/Merkaba in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

I hope that helps someone help me...

 

Problem solved!

The trick was in telling it to utilize the cdrom0 as its mounting point as the tray fits in where the optical drive normally would. Oddly enough, the NTFS Configuration Tool still won't let me click to enable internal NTFS write support but Ubuntu will let me write to my 2nd HD (which is, of course, in NTFS).

I am still uncertain as to whom Ubuntu thinks "owns" this particular HD, but that doesn't seem to be important...for now.

 

Well done, LW. That problem would have kept me stumped, no doubt, for several weeks. LOL

 

I was about to ask you to post your /etc/fstab here

Whenever I tried mounting anything via USB it'd say it couldn't mount. Later on I figured out that it was using /media/cdrom0 as a mount point

 

Presumeably, there isn't a GUI tool to add more hard drives, as otherwise someone would have mentioned it by now?

From a terminal console, It is a straight forward system admin task, but for some users only experienced with GUI tools it may not seem so.

After you have partitioned and formatted the 2nd hard drive, you need to create a mount point before you can mount any new partitions, otherwise you'll be stuck with the choices in /etc/fstab. Before anyone asks, I don't know how the external USB drive was being mounted, I would guess that the hot-plug scripts are creating mount points on-the-fly, but my Debian systems aren't setup to do that.

I can attempt to guide you through finishing the setup of your 2nd hard drive but it would mean typing commands into a console window? Also, I don't usually use NTFS partitions but hopefully that won't be too much of hinderance.

 

Wolf, are you saying that I need to have two partitions on my 2nd hd (it's internal via a ThinkPad tray, swapped with the DVD/CD-RW), one for mounting and one to actually use? I am currently able to read and write to it using NTFS, but despite now being able to use it, Ubuntu still gets confused. Just now I started a download destined for that drive and choosing it as per its label (Merkaba EX) results in error. However, choosing the option CD-ROM 1 does give me access to it, as it is mounted through the connection for my DVD/CD-RW.

I have no love affair for NTFS as this drive is meant primarily for storage under Ubuntu. If I need to move stuff to my Windows PC, I have a larger, external USB HD for that purpose. So if you think another file format will play more nicely, please say so.

I am currently only familiar with GUI options of controlling the OS. The Terminal is a bit frightening, but I am willing to learn.

 

No, a single partition on the 2nd hard drive is fine.

Is the 2nd hard drive going to be semi-permanently installed in the drive bay and do you want it mounted automatically each time you startup Ubuntu?

If you are not going to share the 2nd hard drive with a Windows OS, then it probably makes more sense to use a linux filesystem such as ext3 - but I very much doubt that NTFS is the cause of your problems.

My intention would be to take this one step at time. First of all, partition and format, which you know how to do. Then provide me with some information about your disks. We'll then choose where to mount your new filesystem, and then manually mount and setup the permissions, check that it is okay, and then manually umount it. If all that goes well, we'll finally setup a line in /etc/fstab so that it'll happen automatically during startup. We won't be doing that all in one post though. It's going to be a bit of slow, is that approach okay with you?

1) Decide whether you want to keep the NTFS format or redo that partition with a linux filesystem.

2) After you've completed step 1). We need to collect some information about your system. Open a Terminal and maximise the window to give you lots of room to see the results of your commands.

Type the line below, noting that -l is a lowercase L.

sudo fdisk -l

You'll need to copy & paste the results of that command into your next post. To do that you can hilight with the mouse and then switch to the application where you would like to paste the text and press both the left and right mouse buttons together (this simulates pressing the middle mouse button).

 

To grant r/w permissions to username for the volume mount_location

sudo chown -R username /mount_location/

I remember using this command to fix a similar issue that I had. Try it.