Disappearing External Hard Drive.

[muungwana]

as root open a script at "/etc/rc.local" with a text editor of your liking and add the line in it.

This script runs just before the GUI comes up and its a place to add any command to be executed as root at start up

[wobf58]

I discovered that after an unmount of the drive I have to detach and attach it again to the laptop.  else its not working.  But this is still better than working with Virtualbox.  So I am confident that at some time I will find a way that its just working than other drives.

[muungwana]

I discovered that after an unmount of the drive I have to detach and attach it again to the laptop.  else its not working.  But this is still better than working with Virtualbox.  So I am confident that at some time I will find a way that its just working than other drives.

This workaround is better than the vb one especially for those who can not run vb. We are all thankful you chose to stick with the drive and are still working to make it work as expected and you are sharing your findings.

[wobf58]

Thanks a lot.  I love to dig in and find out why things are not working.  Right now I am only using PCLinuxOS KDE 64bit on my laptop as well as on my netbook.  I would like to share my findings and questions there as well in the testing forum but the reply button isn't showing up when I am going there, so I can't add anything there.  Anyway, this is a different subject, but without all your help I don't would be able to go that far in the first place.

[Just17]

Thanks a lot.  I love to dig in and find out why things are not working.  Right now I am only using PCLinuxOS KDE 64bit on my laptop as well as on my netbook.  I would like to share my findings and questions there as well in the testing forum but the reply button isn't showing up when I am going there, so I can't add anything there.  Anyway, this is a different subject, but without all your help I don't would be able to go that far in the first place.

You must register as a tester to be able to post, I understand

[Yankee]

Ok, i've finally figured it out.  If I understand it correctly, the problem lies in the slow initialization of the drive's firmware to be ready to be scanned by the usb_storage kernel module. If you look at the output of "cat /sys/module/usb_storage/parameters/delay_use" it shows the value "1" (second). The default value for the kernel 3.3 should be "5"

My old LXDE has a value of 5, my newer LXDE has a value of 1, as you mentioned.
All my USB's are working  at the value of 1 as well as 5.

I've read where future kernel adjustments would be changed from 1 to 5.   They called
it "precharge should be changed from 1 to 5" in their changelog.   Hope that is the
same and pertinent info req'd for your hardware, and would give the best permanent
solution.

Just FYI.

[Yankee]

Haven't heard of your problem as solved...

But, I have seen on a machine where adding

waitusb=5:

Adding that on the end of the initrd line in menu.lst could do the trick.
That would force usb's to wait the 5 seconds when plugged in at boot.
Hope so.   Mine work so I don't have a way to test it 100%.    If not, no
harm done, just erase that then.

FYI.