Seagate Expansion 3 TB External HD

[70 Tango Charlie]

Greetings all,
I have a new Seagate Expansion Ext. HD I just bought. Now I see that it only comes with Windows support or Apple.
Is there any way I can get this to work on Linux Mint 19.2? Or any distro of Linux?
Thanks for any and all replies.
Old Geezer
TC

 

[arochester]

They say they do not "support" Linux. That commonly does not mean that something does not work with Linux. It means that they do not give advice (support) about using it with Linux. --- Quite often because they do not know enough about Linux!

https://delightlylinux.wordpress.com/2019/03/31/seagate-expansion-4tb-external-drive-and-linux/

 

[70 Tango Charlie]

@arochester
Thanks a bunch for the link. That answers lots of questions. As per usual, it also raises new ones - as I perused their site. I just have to s_l_o_w down and not skip around too much.
But...I am a 'kid' in the Linux candy store, and flit from one type of candy to another.
Old Geezer
TC

 

[dos2unix]

Honestly... I've never seen a had drive that didn't work with Linux. (modern distro)

You may have to re-create a partition table. (definitely use gpt for 3 T)
I have two of these. I have 5 computers in my house (only 1 has win10 on it)
all the rest are linux. I am anxious to try the Linux 5.4 kernel, as it supports ExFat
natively (no external fuse required).

 

[70 Tango Charlie]

Hi @dos2unix
I'm afraid you lost me in this: (definitely use gpt for 3 T). I need your help in understanding this.
Seems like some simple stuff gives me the most trouble understanding.
Like you, I have almost completely switched over to Linux on 2 desktops and 3 lappies. I also have an old Chromebook, a netbook with W 10, and a 9 yr. old MacBook. {Those 3 I don't do much with anymore, so just going to leave them for posterity}.
Thanks.
Old Geezer
TC

 

[Rob]

Hey there TC,

What i'd do is open up a file explorer type window.. also a terminal tailing /var/log/syslog (as root), then plug it in and see what kind of info you see. I'm betting it'll show right up in the file explorer window as a new mounted drive.

Worst case, it doesn't, but you'll see a bunch of lines scroll by in syslog with its hardware address like /dev/sdb.. in which case, you can use fdisk or gparted to create some partitions and then format them with mkfs tools.

 

[70 Tango Charlie]

@Rob
I do thank you for that info. I will follow your advice and see what I get.
My main cp {that I am using right now} is an HP desktop running LM 19.2 Tina and it would not recognize the Seagate.
Funny that it showed right up when I plugged it into the lappie that has 10 Linux distros on it. Go figure.
Anyhow, thanks very much.
TC