External hard disk mount problem

Hello Community,

I have a Western Digital hard disk USB connected (via USB hub) to openSUSE 11.3 on a 64bit HP computer. When I switch on the computer the WD ext drive switches on automatically and appears on the panel’s USB devices button . I click on that, the WD ext hard disk appears as My Book, I click on that and then on Open with File Manager (Dolphin).
Then the /media folder opens and shows beside others: My Book and My Book-1. If I switch off and then on again the WD ext. hard disk My Book-2 appears beside My Book and My Book-1. Why is that?

I came across this problem as Simple Linux Backup doesn’t perform correctly. The backup folders/files currently go only to /tmp folder whereas they should go to /media/My Book.

Is anybody out there who could help me? Thank you!

Show us the result of this with it connected:

su - terminal do:

fdisk -l

from home/user:

Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk identifier: 0x767aae89

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          13      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2              13       33326   267586672    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3           33326       90087   455928832    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4           90087       91202     8952832    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5           33326       33588     2096569+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6           33588       36199    20972544   83  Linux
/dev/sda7           36199       90087   432858112   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdd: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x5c74ae42

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1               1       30401   244196001    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Please, please, please!. Do put your computer’s answer between CODE tags, like caf 4926 did put your computer input between CODE tags.
Use Advanced (lower right button) to get the # button in your bar above, or enter the tags by hand.

And read http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Basics_of_partitions,_filesystems,_mount_points#From_static_to_dynamic on the -1, -2, … phenomenon.

When you have this disk attached allways to your system, make an entry for it in /etc/fstab (and then you can decide where to mount it and you are not bound to /media/something).

To me your problem is probably easily solved by adding a Volume Label

This video shows a Label being added: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/bootflag%20-%20labels.mpeg
You may need to right click and save the link if your computer won’t play it in your browser. VLC player will play the file if you download it.

The label is being done using Parted Magic
Using Parted Magic an Introduction

You can download it here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/pmagic-4.5.iso
Burn it to a cd and boot it. And away you go.

The label name is not that important. You could call it: ExternalHD or My_Book

Hm, Carl, are you making a fool out of me rotfl! rotfl!

Yes, Carl changed SeemanAhoy’s post to contain CODE tags on the correct places. Now my point is pointless >:(, but the readability is mich increased :slight_smile:

Back to the problem. The -1, -2, … problem is due to the removal of the device without unmounting it (clled something like Remove savely) first. That does not change by giving the fs a label. And I assume the fs on sdd1 has allready a label: “My Book”, where would that string else come from?

Thank you for your reply, Henk and sorry for not putting the CODE tags. I didn’t know them. Is this the correct way?:


Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk identifier: 0x767aae89

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 13 33326 267586672 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 33326 90087 455928832 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4 90087 91202 8952832 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 33326 33588 2096569+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 33588 36199 20972544 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 36199 90087 432858112 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdd: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x5c74ae42

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 1 30401 244196001 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) 

I’ve read the SDB: Basics … you quoted and with regards to /etc/fstab: I don’t feel confident to make changes there not to mention that I wouldn’t know how to.

As you have seen Carl allready changed your post with the CODE tags and you show that you know to use them above, that is more then OK from me.

When you do not feel familiar with editing /etc/fstab, you can do two things:
a) use YaST > System > Partitioner (look around if you can find out what to do there, in any case DO NOT FORMAT your partition, ask first here when you feel not confident!);
b) ask here what to add.
When you go for b) can you please give the output of

ls -l /dev/disk/by-label

for us to check if the fs has a label. We could make an entry directly for /dev/sdd1, but I would prefer to use a *by-label *entry because it is very easy to change the sdd part of the whole due to an USB device more or less being on the system.

Thank you caf4926, I will get back to you/the Forum later as VLC Player doesn’t work (yet?).

Aha, now I get into the swing…! Here’s the outcome of

ls -l /dev/disk/by-label
total 0
rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2010-12-14 08:32 COMPAQ -> ../../sda2
rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2010-12-14 08:32 FACTORY_IMAGE -> ../../sda4
rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2010-12-14 14:28 My\x20Book -> ../../sdd1
rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2010-12-14 08:32 System -> ../../sda1

As you see it has the label “My Book”. The x20 is too care for the blank space that in there. Now I have a problem here, not knowing how to specify a blank space in the first field of an entry in the /etc/fstab file (nothing about it in the man page). We can circumvent this by using* by-id* like all other entries in openSUSE. For this we need the id of that disk and we find this with

ls -l /dev/disk/by-id | grep sdd1

The other thing we need is where you want the fs to be mounted. The automatic mount done by HAL c.s. is at* /media/something* but you may like a different place like /home/SeemannAhoy/bücher. It is up to you.

Also, may I ask why this is (apparently) a non Linux file system? Are you still using this to exchange files with a MS system?

I’ll do it like that:

blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/sdd1 | awk '{ printf "#/dev/sdd1
UUID=%s	/media/MyBook	ntfs-3g	defaults,user	0  0
", $1 }'

This should display the entry you need to add to /etc/fstab in order to mount /dev/sdd1 in /media/MyBook . The mountpoint (/media/MyBook) is up to you but the directory has to exists. So you have to create it. Also I don’t know it the mount options (defaults,user) are what the ones you need, but you can change them later in /etc/fstab.

As the others said, there are different ways of mounting partitions: by name, by labels, by UUID or by symlinks created in /dev/disk/… (by-id, by-label, by-uuid). Using device names (/dev/sdd1, etc) is a bad idea and might not always work as expected with external hds.

Btw using spaces in file and directory names is always a bad idea.

On 2010-12-14 16:06, SeemannAhoi wrote:

> Then the /media folder opens and shows beside others: My Book and My
> Book-1. If I switch off and then on again the WD ext. hard disk My
> Book-2 appears beside My Book and My Book-1. Why is that?

You have to umount first. This is fundamental.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

Dear Helpers,

as school holidays of my children have just started I am unfortunately restricted with time. I will get back to you all with a result or possibly with a further question later. The unmount-first-idea seems to be promising, I will test it together with the Simple Linux Backup programme. Thank you for your help so far!!

I do not know what you exactly mean with “unmount-first-idea”. It is a law in itself that you allways must unmount (remove savely as some GUIs tell their innocent users) before one removes a storage device. This is like closing the tap before removing the bucket. Also when you want to mount it elsewhere, you first have to remove it where it is.

Hello Everybody,

the good news is that my backup now works (nearly) as I wanted it to be. I mount/un-mount the external hard disk manually. Whereas I am a bit puzzled (Puzzled Penguin) that it is not a problem to plug-in/unplug a camera or iPod without manually mounting/un-mounting them.

I will at a later point in time try to make an entry for MyBook in /etc/fstab as you suggested in order to avoid this manual mounting/un-mounting business.

hvvv: "Also, may I ask why this is (apparently) a non Linux file system? Are you still using this to exchange files with a MS system?

I use dual boot Win7 and openSUSE 11.3 and I have some files on the windows partion to be backed up with Simple Linux Backup. I also backup Win7 separately (Acronis) on MyBook.

Again, thank you for your assistance so far. Later when I’ll try to make an entry for an external hard disk I might come back to you again.

I wish you a happy New Year!