How does a hard drive be not Linux compatible? is it just that the drive/drives in question are preformatted NTFS, and if so, can it not just be formatted for Linux, just as things are done now, or is there something else going on here?

Article
http://www.madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=8121



[moved from Talk-Talk by spinynorman]

I assume it must be at firmware level. Anyway who cares, let Seagate (and all the others who shun GNU/Linux) die a thousand deaths.

From the article:
"...But it does not excuse the painfully obvious cue from Microsoft that the drives in question have apparently been preformatted as NTFS. "

That's the only thing (that the article mentions) that makes them "not Linux compatible" which is quite an exaggeration, since all you have to do is delete that partition and create a new Linux-compatible one. I don't see the big deal...they are saving most of their customers the time it takes to format a drive, which on large ATA drives can be quite a while.

[edit]: I did discover recently that my Sony DVD burner is no longer Linux-compatible (I used to be able to burn DVDs with it, but apparently the Linux kernel has surpassed the firmware on it). I tried moving the drive to my wife's computer to upgrade the firmware on it, but it still didn't work...so I just bought a new one (not Sony).

What model number was it?

That is what I though, and I just couldn't understand how anyone, by any stretch of the imagination could call that 'not Linux Compatible', I mean you got to format it anyway, you may as well say that all unformatted drives are incompatible. So I thought there must be something else.



I do, they are my preferred drive manufacturer.

Well apparently GNU/Linux users are not their preferred customers!

Sony DRU500AX

Just suddenly, one day I discovered Linux wouldn't recognize any media I put in it as burnable media. It would format it, but then say it could not be burned to. Media types I had burned to 100s of times before. (There was about a year or so since I had last burned a DVD on it.)

Phew! Thanks for that, I have a couple sitting in a box never been used. Not that model thank goodness.

That's just a stupid stupid article.

For a start... you can reformat a hard disk

And secondly, Linux SUPPORTS NTFS.

Google ntfs-3g, fast, stable NTFS support. And it's seamless as any other file system (unless your distro has it implemented crappily).

Doesnt neccesarily mean that it's "linux incompatible". Could be a kernel/cdrecord bug getting in the way. Particularly seeing as it used to work.

I dislike sony as much as the next person.... but -- If it worked on Linux when the drive came out... and the kernel was upgraded and the drive stopped working -- that's not sony's fault.

WD has always said they don't support Linux on the hard drives (unless they changed this recently). Seems like all Seagate is doing is saying the same thing (except also formatting it NTFS). Probably just means if you install linux, have a problem, and contact their tech support you'll get the "go away, we don't support your kind here" response.

there's nothing from Seagate that actually says that they "aren't supporting Linux". Just a stupid article with no references.

Given the amount of sales in drives for servers and large storage... seagate are hardly going to say to those users "something wrong? oh you run linux, your problem" anyway.

I still have one Sony DRU500AX. I paid for it a lot of money (405$) some six years ago. It's one of the last drives actually made by Sony- after that they began rebranding Lite-On drives.
The drive is working perfectly well under linux, but it has big trouble with most modern media dyes (media brands are not relevant, as they usually pack whatever dye is available at the time as "Brand X"). The cure could be new firmware by Sony, but this will never happen, and besides that, a brand new burner costs 40$ or something like that...
I'd call it media incompatibility, not Linux incompatibility.

I never buy Sony mainly because of their incompatibility problems. Just like Canon printers because of the lack of Linux support - unless of course you don't mind shelling out for turboprint drivers.

Anyway, Seagate have just had their disk pre-formatted with NTFS. Your USB sticks are pre-formatted with FAT16 or FAT32. So is that a problem for you also? It's the same scenario.

Windows users make up the majority of the population but this is changing. However, either using ntfs-3g or deleting and re-partitioning is all you need to do to use it. It isn't that it isn't compatible in terms of that you cannot see the disk, or even see it but not format it because it's blocked

When you initially installed Linux, you would have re-partitioned your hard drive from Windows to install it

Well, servers aren't laptops. This article suggests the HDD killer is laptop-mode http://ubuntudemon.wordpress.com/2007/10/2...ive-killer-bug/Is there any substance in this report?

That's not seagate. And that's got nothing to do with the hardware itself. It's the software in use.


Laptop mode is a pretty awesome set of scripts that can help save a tonne of power.

In this situation, laptop mode is off by default, and these distros are including overly aggressive default settings.

That ubuntu bug is terribly misleading too. There's people running around like chooks with their heads cut off expecting their drive to fail tomorrow because they misread the output of smartctl. This apparent "issue" isn't something new. It's something that will sat there for years until someone panicked. Hard drives aren't actually failing left right and center, otherwise we'd have heard about it by now.

scarecrow: I can accept that explanation...sorta. But, I had burned on the exact same media before (I still had some left in the pack after 2 or 3 years...I didn't burn very much).

Steve, your problem could be a lens focus setting or rotation speed setting that has slightly shifted with time.
I have this problem at home, were my salon's CD drive doesn't burn anymore, and has more and more difficulties in "seeing" inserted media. Often, it won't see a DVD, and I have to open the tray, shift the media a bit to present it at a different angle, and close the tray again a couple of times before it painfully manages to see the media.

I've often had this problem with aging music CD readers, except with these I know how to open them apart and turn the right "potentiomètre" to set the acuracy right again.

Yves.

Once upon a time, the solution was cleaning the laser lens to remove dust. But currently, all laser lenses are made of cheap plastic, so using the oldfashioned cleaning kits will render them useless.
If you have the patience, remove the drive from the bay, then remove the top cover, and then use a can of compressed air (sold in pretty much any electronics' store) to clean the lens. No chemicals, no direct touch of the lens (this will misalign it, and the repair will cost more than a new drive).