can't see the SSD

cowboy

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Hello, I'm using a system 76 Linux machine with pop OS.

I'm trying to connect a "My Book" SSD. Plug it into a USB port and it doesn't see it.

Apparently it's not recognizing it.

I'm hoping the fix or any adjustment that needs to be made will be fairly simple and straightforward.
Thanks
 


try looking in discs it may be there, but also it may need mounting as its a fats storage device
 
What output do you get when you use the lsblk command? You could try looking in /dev/ to see if anything shows up there. You might also check the system journal with journalctl -xe right after plugging in your SSD.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell
 
The Desktop mod is Thelio,

p.s.


someone mentioned this,
"
Pop should auto mount it. If it didn’t, you’ll likely need to install the packages needed for that drive’s file system. NTFS.

Open a terminal and run this command.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install ntfs-3g fuse "

your thoughts
 
This drive is not formatted and accessed the same as a regular drive. It has WD's cruft atop it. The last time I looked, it STILL required special software that was Windows or MacOS only. You needed WINE to access it. It is managed with software that isn't free (as in open source).

It is/was possible to remove the drive from the enclosure so that you can format it and then use it as expected.

But, it's a bit of a challenge to use with Linux - or was. A quick search didn't look promising but you can try a more extensive search for 'WD My Book +Linux" to see what works. I don't have one to test with but they're very much proprietary devices with features like built-in encryption.
 
Hello, I'm using a system 76 Linux machine with pop OS.

I'm trying to connect a "My Book" SSD. Plug it into a USB port and it doesn't see it.

Apparently it's not recognizing it.

I'm hoping the fix or any adjustment that needs to be made will be fairly simple and straightforward.
Thanks
It was already said that it needs proprietary software to work for windoze and mac only. If you are looking for storage on USB just get a USB 3 flash drive and you will not have issues. You didn't research your product enough so you are now stuck with something that may never do what you want.
USB storage should be generic USB3 flash drive.
SSD should be a reputable mfg and use either SATA or PCIE like an M.2
either of those would not have required many extra steps.

If I can make a suggestion. return the item as it was not compatible. Then go get one of the 2 things I mentioned depending on what you need to do. If you need to remove it often then USB otherwise M.2 or SATA. You will thank me for this because screwing around to make it work will leave you very frustrated and without what you originally wanted. Get what you need first time and don't worry about it.
 
It was already said that it needs proprietary software to work for windoze and mac only. If you are looking for storage on USB just get a USB 3 flash drive and you will not have issues. You didn't research your product enough so you are now stuck with something that may never do what you want.
USB storage should be generic USB3 flash drive.
SSD should be a reputable mfg and use either SATA or PCIE like an M.2
either of those would not have required many extra steps.

If I can make a suggestion. return the item as it was not compatible. Then go get one of the 2 things I mentioned depending on what you need to do. If you need to remove it often then USB otherwise M.2 or SATA. You will thank me for this because screwing around to make it work will leave you very frustrated and without what you originally wanted. Get what you need first time and don't worry about it.
I've had this SSD for 5+ yrs........ just got the linux maching, indeed, if I was shopping for one or had just bought it I would do as you said.

Had it on hand, so I tried it.
 
I've had this SSD for 5+ yrs........ just got the linux maching, indeed, if I was shopping for one or had just bought it I would do as you said.

Had it on hand, so I tried it.
As you can see, you have to be very careful in hardware purchases. So many manufacturers have garbage design and things that only work in windows as long as you use their software, their stuff and only use it on every other tuesday between 3:55 and 4:00 pm during a stampede of wild elephants in your own living room.

You have to research it and make sure it works the right way. I have made these bad purchases before and now I know to look first. In fact in our computer shop everything sold is tested to work with linux before it goes on the shelf.

I know you want to use what you had because you have it. Totally understand that. However you may not want it for your current project. You should bite the bullet and spend the money on something that will not cause excessive hair loss for you. Although you should always test the item, it may surprise you and just work without anything else.
 
I've had this SSD for 5+ yrs........ just got the linux maching, indeed, if I was shopping for one or had just bought it I would do as you said.

Had it on hand, so I tried it.
"My Book" is a Western Digital product.

The wikipedia entry on this unit says:
Internals
Controller board for My Book World Edition

This drive runs BusyBox on Linux on an Oxford Semiconductor 0XE800 ARM chip which has the ARM926EJ-S core. In addition it uses a VIA Cicada Simpliphy vt6122 Gigabit Ethernet chipset, and a Hynix 32 Mbit DDR Synchronous DRAM chip. The webserver is the mini_http server, although older "bluerings" use Lighttpd. The drives of the World Edition are xfs or ext3 formatted, which means that the drive can be mounted as a standard drive from within Linux if removed from the casing and installed in a normal PC.

Does that sound like it applies to the unit you have?

In any case, to see whether or not the kernel sees the device, one can open a terminal, and run the command, as root:
Code:
dmesg -w
and watch the terminal output as you plug the lead of My Book into a usb socket. If the kernel sees it, it will output some text on screen to identify what it has seen. If nothing appears to change on screen when plugging in, the kernel can't see the unit and so it can't do anything with it. It's useful to have the latest kernel installed for the latest drivers.

To close the dmesg output, run: ctrl+c.

As the quote indicates, the drive in the unit itself may still be useful if removed and mounted itself.
 
As the quote indicates, the drive in the unit itself may still be useful if removed and mounted itself.

As hinted in my post at #5, this has limited use. The data is encrypted and can't be decrypted without the WD cruft atop it. So, mounting the device is only useful if their goal is to wipe it and use it as a fresh storage device.
 

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