Partition/Format an IDE drive using USB Connection

[William_in_Kanata]

Kubuntu 10.04, 64 bit.

I have new, unpartitioned, unformatted IDE drive, on which I want to create one partition with an ext3 file system. The device is connected through a USB port. Is this possible?

At the moment, when I connect the device to my machine, dolphin doesn't see the device. Is this because it has no file system, or should I be looking for some other problem? If I plug in a normal USB stick, it shows up in Dolphin as expected.

Thanks for your time.

[dibl]

Re: Partition/Format an IDE drive using USB Connection

I have new, unpartitioned, unformatted IDE drive

In the year 2011 you found a new IDE drive? What was it, in someone's freezer for the last 7 years?

OK, you said "connected". Tell us more -- how is it connected? It needs 12V power, and it needs an IDE > USB adapter, at least. I have such an adapter, and I can connect an IDE drive to a USB port, but I'm wondering whether you have all the needed adaptations.

Right -- Dolphin will not see it, until it has a valid filesystem on it. You need to use GParted, first make a partition table, then put a partition on it and format it. ext4 would be the logical filesystem format at this time, if you intend to use it with Linux.

[William_in_Kanata]

Re: Partition/Format an IDE drive using USB Connection

I have an adapter that accepts an IDE drive, and connects to a USB port on my machine; the drive has power. The adapter recognises the drive as IDE, when the jumper is in the slave position, but not when it is in the master or cable select positions.

When I start GParted, it is only showing me the single existing drive in the machine (/dev/sda).

[SteveRiley]

Re: Partition/Format an IDE drive using USB Connection

What if you reboot the computer while the drive is attached, can you see it with a partition manager then?

[William_in_Kanata]

Re: Partition/Format an IDE drive using USB Connection

More information.

The device didn't show up if we rebooted with the device connected.

I had not actually opened the machine up earlier. I had been told that there was one IDE device in it, but when we opened the case, we found that there already two IDE devices. I don't know if that was the problem, but with time pressing, we disconnected one and put the new drive in instead, and formatted it.

For now case closed. When I have more time I will go back and try and figure out what the problem was.

[dibl]

Re: Partition/Format an IDE drive using USB Connection

Right -- it's been many years since motherboards were commonly found with two IDE connectors. So, if there is an internal IDE hard drive, and then the optical drive is the second IDE device, and there's only a single IDE channel on the motherboard, you are done. I suppose that is what you found inside.

My external adapter allows the running IDE drive to be "hot plugged" as a USB device, and it seen as such. So power has to be applied first, and when the drive has spun up, then the USB connector is inserted and the "device notifier" pops up with its little announcement. GParted and fdisk see it normally -- nothing special about the IDE nature of the interface.