[ltp] Adding USB hard drive storage

[Pablo Vera]

Excellent idea, but new 300GB-500GB SATA drives with USB2 enclosures are 
now breaking the $100 dollars mark, so why waste money on used and, 
maybe, unreliable hard drives ?

My two cents.

Pablo
_____________________________________________________________________


Mendel Cooper wrote:
> All right, so the following doesn't apply _specifically_ to Thinkpads ...
> 
> 
> You can pick up a used 20 - 100 GB 3.5" hard drive for a few bucks at
> yard sales, on the Bay, or elsewhere. Together with a USB enclosure or
> just a USB/cable/converter ($10 or so), you can cobble together cheap
> massive storage and backup. Here's how.
> 
> Attach drive with cable or enclosure to USB port on your Thinkpad. It should
> be a USB 2 port unless you have infinite patience (USB 1.1 is unbelievably
> slow for large data transfer). If necessary buay a USB 2 port converter that
> plugs into a PCMCIA slot (about $10).
> 
> Now ...
> 
> As root:
> 1) fdisk /dev/sda
> Notes:
>   * Not /dev/sda1. You want to partition the disk device, not a partition.
>   * I create a single huge partition. No compelling reason for separate
>     partitions, but hey, different strokes ...
> 
> 2) e2fsck -v /dev/sda1
> Notes:
>   * Repeat for each partition, /dev/sda2, /dev/sda3, etc., as necessary.
>   * You may use the -c option to check for bad blocks, this this is _slow_.
>   * No need for ext3 partitions, I don't think.
> 
> 3) To mount the formatted drive, plug it into the USB slot with enclosure
>    or cable, then
>    gnome-mount -d /dev/sda1
>    gnome-mount -d /dev/sda2, etc.
> 
>    Or, just let KDE or Gnome automount it for you.
> 
> 
> Hey, that's all.
> 
> Comments?
> 
> 
> ---Mendel
>