Questions tagged [external-hdd]

Issues with external HDD including USB, Firewire (IEE1394) and e-sata connections as well as issues relating to mounting, formatting and partitioning.

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Ubuntu 18.04 LTS freezes on Dell G7 7588

Two challenges with my Dell G7 15 7588 and Ubuntu 18.04 Ubuntu freezes when the (nVidia 1060 Max Q) GPU is used. Tried modifying the GRUB to not use it by adding nouveau and tried installing the ...
Xigma's user avatar
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Unable to detach (spindown) external USB HDD in 15.04; "Safely Remove" just remounts it

I have an external USB 3.0 HDD with several partitions on it, and I can't safely remove it (spin it down) before unplugging in Ubuntu 15.04. I can run "Unmount" on each partition; but after ...
osgx's user avatar
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489 views

Shotwell : how to browse external library without external drive plugged-in

My laptop hard drive is running out of space so I decided to put my entire photo library (33000+ pictures, 160 Gb) on a dedicated external hard drive. The process went smoothly ... until I found out ...
Cowboydan's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
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Safely Remove on External portable drive "Keeps remounting drive"

i have a problem trying to safely remove an external portable drive in Ubuntu 14.04 because when i tried to safely remove the drive it closes for a while but then just keeps coming back(mounts itself ...
Goyzki's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
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Automatic synchronization or backup to External HDD at every plugin

I used to backup one partition to an external drive using grsync but now i have to backup different different folders to corresponding folders in External HDD. It would be helpful if they can be ...
data9's user avatar
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Why does it take 5-10 minutes to mount an external HDD?

I Have an external HDD drive (USB 3.0, 750Gb) almost full. When I connect it to a USB Port in my laptop (USB 3.0 or USB 2.0), it takes forever mounting it (like 5 to 10 minutes) but finally does it. ...
Juan Gaete's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
1k views

Shotwell: Storing part of library on external HDD

I am trying to sort out my Ubuntu photo workflow, and I wondered if anyone could offer some advice. I store my photo library on an external HDD, which is on my desk at home. I would like to be able ...
TDN169's user avatar
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HHDs are unmounted on transferring a large number of files

I am transferring a large number of files (10-100 million) between two external HDDs (connected via USB 3.0), but the external disks are unmounted during the transfer. All HDDs connected via USB (...
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3 votes
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What does it mean if my partition type is HFS/HFS+ but contents are FAT?

I have formatted my external hard disk with the command sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sda2. The disks utility still shows that the partition is of type HFS, so is this safe to use at the moment? I want to use ...
Abhishek cherath's user avatar
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Decrypting External Hard Drive

A couple months back I had an old 350 gb Transcend external drive I forgot about and on a whim, installed Ubuntu on it. After using it for a couple months I decided to ditch Windows all together and ...
tooHigh's user avatar
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Ubuntu 16.04 does not install working UEFI when installing on external drive (no /EFI/BOOT/*.efi in EFI partition), how to properly solve?

My hard-drive on Ubuntu running laptop died because of age and extensive use in the past, but before it died completely I managed to create persistent live-usb pendrive to use as temporally system. ...
Esuil's user avatar
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External hard drive not detected after first boot : Xubuntu 14.04

I have the following problem and hope to find help by someone. On the first boot of my Intel NUC after a longer period of time (for example, over night) Xubuntu won't mount nor detect (blkid) my ...
Halbstark's user avatar
3 votes
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74 views

Device names for internal\external HDDs when installing on external USB HDD

Really sorry to bump in with a silly question, please bear with a newbie. I want to install Ubuntu on an external USB HDD attached to a pre-UEFI BIOS PC with 3 internal HDD/SSDs. The installation ...
TaijiquanGaoshou's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
115 views

How do you install and run apps from a flash drive/ sd card

i have ubuntu on my chromebook, thus to save space, i would like to run apps from external storage. how do i do that.
funsungoku's user avatar
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1 answer
1k views

How can I install applications (with apt-get) to an external disk?

I'm on a chromebook running Ubuntu inside a chroot via crouton. Thus, I have limited space. However, I have an external 32GB (extremely) high-speed SD Card. I'd like to install some of my larger ...
Tejas Manohar's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
5k views

Mounting WD external hard drive mybook

UPDATE: When I put in dmesg after plugging the external hd in, the output is the following (last lines): [15233.307914] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) [...
Daniel Sheffer's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
2k views

How do I decrypt BitLocker-encrypted external hard drive on Ubuntu 14.04?

I have a 1TB Transcend external Hard drive, which is already encrypted with BitLocker (Windows feature for encrypting drives), I removed my Windows OS and now using Ubuntu 14.04 but unfortunately ...
Utmankhail's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
2k views

Slow USB transfer speeds

I am experiencing very slow USB transfer speeds when trying to backup files to a USB HDD. I am not entirely sure when the problem 1st occured but there was definitely a period using 12.04 where ...
bph's user avatar
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3 votes
2 answers
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Is my HDD broken?

I have an external USB HDD which I think is broken. When I plug it in nothing happens. Can we confirm that is broken? Here is dmesg output: [ 7998.225453] usb 2-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 10 [...
kapcom01's user avatar
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How can I make my ubuntu 12.04 act like an external usb hard drive?

Quick breakdown, I have a Roku 2 XS that has a USB port that you can connect a flash drive or external hard drive to. I also have a box running Ubuntu that is the household media storage center. I ...
jeffcg's user avatar
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2 votes
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159 views

Ownership of external drives

I am using Ubuntu 22.04 on a older hp laptop (intel core i7 with AMD Radeon Topaz - but its using the intel graphics as Topaz does not appear to be supported in 22.04) I have two external USB drives ...
yorickk's user avatar
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1 answer
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External USB Drive Detached - what is causing it? // uas_eh_abort_handler

I have an external HDD (Seagate RSS LLC Backup Plus Slim) on which a program as heavily writing tonight. When I checked this morning, I could see that the "lsblk" does not show the harddrive ...
Benjamin's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
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No disk tool lists my old 4 TB spinning HDD. I can't get in contact with it

I've tried to connect it via an esata cable and via USB. It's not listed with fdisk -l. How can i mount it? dmesg | tail -n 100 Doesn't list anything about my large disk. I have just installed ...
Lars Gustafsson's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
291 views

External HDD works on Windows and Mac, but not detected/showing up in Ubuntu

Recently switched from Windows 10 to Ubuntu in my PC. So, I'm new to Ubuntu OS. I have a 1 TB external HDD that has been formatted in Windows 7. That HDD detected in Windows & Mac OS. So, we can ...
Karuppiah RK's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
737 views

Seagate external HDD not mounting

I have an old(ish) 3tb Seagate HDD that has a lot of material on it and I wish to transfer it to my snazzy new external HDD. I'm having no end of problems doing so. When I first booted my laptop with ...
Andy Baader's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
140 views

Is it advisable to create partitions of different block sizes to categorize files? How does it affect performance?

1 and 2 are essentially the same question, but with a slightly different context. 1) Let's say you have an external 1 TB SSD, and you have hundreds of large files like DVDs/Video about 2GB each and ...
HumbleData21's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
162 views

LUKS error after unlocking waiting for cleartext object

I have a an external hardrive which is encrypted with LUKS. It was working fine for a while but now when I try to unlock it I get $ udisksctl unlock -b /dev/sdb1 Passphrase: Error unlocking /dev/...
Émile Nadeau's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
5k views

External Hard Disk is Not detected by ubuntu 16.04

I'm on a fresh install of ubuntu 16.04 (dual boot with windows 10) and have noticed that my external hard drive (seagate backup plus 2TB) is not detected at all.There are two partitions on this disk (...
J. Jones's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
119 views

Backup (Deja-Dup) repeats backup of multiple folders

I have been using the default tool to backup folders on my PC and on an external hard drive, to second external drive. There's about 150GB total data. After making the first backup, I would expect ...
Nicoh's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
1k views

Boot from an ext4 partition on an external hard drive?

I have a Samsung RF511 laptop and a new USB 3 2TB external hard drive (Samsung M3 2TB USB 3.0 Portable). The laptop runs Windows 10 so I thought I'd try taking advantage of USB 3's speed to install ...
sigint's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
237 views

Problems while resizing bootable external drive :-(

Gparted hangs while trying to resize the existing ext4 bootable partion. How should I resize it to hold another partition for Windows ? In more details, I had made the 1TB external drive bootable (...
maan81's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
418 views

/media/administrator directory showing 2 folders of the same external usb drive

While I was copying a file from my external HDD to my internal my Ubuntu crashed. This caused a problem, because now i have 2 folders in my /media/administrator folder, one is named after my external ...
holyslayer pt's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
2k views

External Hard Drive Repeatedly Connecting

My external hard drive (Seagate 2 TB) keeps disconnecting momentarily and reconnecting. Since it causes nautilus to open each time it reconnects, leaving my computer on overnight has caused system ...
Che's user avatar
  • 21
2 votes
0 answers
386 views

KDE asking for password to mount external hd

Any ideas as to why kde asks for root password when mounting an external hd (using the gui)? It did not use to do that. Has something changed in the way thing used to work?
raptisth's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
603 views

Installing Ubuntu on external hard drive (boots to black screen)

Hey everyone this is my first post here on the askUbuntu forums. I've been an avid Linux user for over a year now but by no means an expert. The problem I'm facing is one I have not been able to ...
Koolcdj69's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
151 views

Is there any way to store file thumbnails in each partition? (XFCE)

Is it possible to persuade Xubuntu to store file thumbnails for an external hard drive into the drive itself instead of the home folder? Benefits include avoiding the ~/.thumbnails folder to get too ...
Reza's user avatar
  • 1,235
2 votes
0 answers
479 views

Slow performance while copying large files to external peripherals

Since I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.10, I have been having many problems with External Storage devices like Hard Disk and pen drives. Sometimes, my external HDD (WD Passport 500 GB) is not detected at all,...
user187451's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
2k views

Mount error on new, empty External HDD - ext4

Apologies if this seems like a very similar question to others already on the site. I have searched for a few hours now for solutions, but nothing seems to be quite the same. I recently (2 days ago) ...
Jason's user avatar
  • 21
2 votes
0 answers
766 views

Hard Drive too slow

My computer has been going too slow since I remember, I tried several tips I found on Internet but nothing worked. After spending some time searching about the problem I found that it might be my hard ...
user166246's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
466 views

Ubuntu 12.10 difficulties with first time startup on USB external hard drive

Today I decided to finally try out Ubuntu, so I followed the Windows installation guide. I downloaded the Desktop Ubuntu 12.10 ISO for Windows, and used the Pen Drive Linux USB Installer to install ...
TameFlame's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
666 views

Automatic incremental backups to an encrypted external hard disk

What is the best way to do automatic incremental backups (and if possible to store more than a single version of the same file) to an external usb hard disk with full hard disk encryption? I don't ...
BackBackUp's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
1k views

front usb wont mount harddrives, internal usb ports do

I have noticed something in my new build, i am using Ubuntu desktop newest version my motherboard is the asus f1a75-m pro R2.0 with the usb ports in the back all my NTFS hard disks or usb sticks work ...
Thesgsuser's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
166 views

Getting the external hard-drive faster into standby

Currently, my external hard-drive is going into standby after 15 minutes of inactivity. How can I reduce this period to e.g. 5 minutes? Using Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit with Gnome Shell. Thanks in advance!
DMT's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
431 views

Permissions to access an encrypted external HDD

I have an external HDD which has an encrypted ext4 filesystem. When I plug it into one of my laptops and provide the encryption password, I get this popup box saying: You do not have permissions ...
Fasterz's user avatar
  • 41
2 votes
1 answer
81 views

External HDD not getting recognized

I was formatting a 320GB Seagate HDD from NTFS TO ext4 when there was a power outage. When the power was restored my PC no longer recognized the HDD. I used the Terminal command cat /proc/partitions ...
user257667's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
656 views

How do I automatically monitor SMART with external USB drives and warn if necessary?

My External USB drive died, and Ubuntu gave no indication that it there was a problem. It would be useful if the system gave a warning for failing drives, including external USB ones. Is there a way ...
waspinator's user avatar
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2 votes
3 answers
3k views

Can't copy from hfs+ external

I've spent days and days trying to figure this out, but still can't. I think I've read every article on this and tried all there is to try, and I still can't copy any file from my mac-formatted hfs+ ...
Janine's user avatar
  • 21
1 vote
0 answers
123 views

Huge data loss in folder on external HDD after moving files into it

The problem I've had a few PDF/epub files that I wanted to backup on my external drive that holds all my documents and files. I used Ctrl + X to move PDF files from my desktop directory of my home ...
Hauptideal's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
188 views

(exFAT) Unable to mount or use brand new WD MyBook 14Tb external HDD

I have an issue and I can't seem to have any solution for it. I'm trying to connect a brand new WD MyBook 14Tb to my Ubuntu computer externally. The HDD is recognized and identified but the Exfat ...
DevMau5's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
112 views

Ubuntu external SSD only boots on computer used to install

I installed Ubuntu 23.04 Desktop with new installer from live USB onto my external SSD. There are only 3 partitions: /boot/efi (FAT) / (Ext4) (another data partition as exFAT used as regular storage) ...
sudoer's user avatar
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