Re: How to partition and format external disk to ext3

[Paul Richards <paul.richards@gmail.com>]

2009/8/3 Paul E Condon <pecondon@mesanetworks.net>:
>
> To discover the device name and partition name that the kernel wants
> you to use for the HDD, run 'ls -l /dev/sd*'
>
> If this give more than two lines of output, unplug whatever other USB
> devices you are running and repeat. If you still have more than two
> lines, go slow, and think hard. Try unplugging your new HDD and plugging
> it in again, and monitor how/what device names change as you do that.
>

An alternative is to run 'dmesg' shortly after plugging in the new
drive.  It'll spit out a series of messages, the tail end of which
should show the new drive being recognised.

Another alternative is to run 'mount' priort to ejecting/unmounting
the disk from your desktop environment.  You'll see from the listing
the name of the USB drive.

-- 
Paul Richards