Cannot access external hard drive

[ryanxv]

When I try to access my HP My Book external hard drive I get this message:An error occurred while accessing 'My Book', the system responded: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure: mount: /dev/ext2fs/My Book : Operation not supported by device. Do I need to format this drive,and if so how do I do it?

[Beanpole]

Are you using a particular file manager that is giving you this error, or are you using the command line?
You can run the command "mount" to see if your device is already mounted and where. If it is mounted, just point your filemanager to that directory rather than clicking on the device. If your device is not mounted, you could always try the following commands (as root).

cd /media
mkdir My-Book
mount -t ext2fs /dev/ext2fs/My\ Book /media/My-Book

Now just point your file manager to the /media/My-Book directory to view the contents.
To unmount it when you are done:

unmount /media/My-Book
rmdir /media/My-Book

If you try out the latest snapshot for PC-BSD 9.1, there is a new tray application for mounting/unmounting devices that will do all of this for you, rather than relying on the somewhat linux-y methods that most of the file managers use (which don't always work properly on BSD).

[ryanxv]

I forgot to mention that there are no files on this particular drive and that it may need to be formatted. As for your question, I am using Dolphin and not the command line.

[Dante77]

I have filed a bug which is possibly related to the problem you are experiencing with the external hard drive.
The error message is identical although the version of PC-BSD I was testing was 9.1 RC1.

http://trac.pcbsd.org/ticket/665

If there is an update on this ticket I am sure you problem will be fixed as a direct consequence.

[wjahn]

Hi, I am having the same problem, but when I try to mount the external drive manually (command line), I get the following:

[wolfram@pcbsd-894] ~# mount -t ext2fs /dev/ext2fs/wj/ /media/wj/
mount: /dev/ext2fs/wj : Invalid argument

I completed the path to the usb drive (/dev/ext2fs/wj) using tabs, so there is no chance of misspelling....