Can't see Seagate USB HDD used for iMac backup

[Les Kerf]

I have a 1TB Seagate GoFlex® Desk external USB HDD with which we do backups on my wife's iMac. As far as I know, it works fine on the iMac.

Out of curiosity, I plugged it into my Acer Aspire 7741Z laptop running ThinSlacko 533, and the GoFlex did not get recognized. I also tried Lucid 528, and then Windows 7. None of them would recognize the external HDD (no icon showed up like it does with a thumb drive) and thus I cannot read the contents.

I presume that the GoFlex drive is formatted in some weird Apple format that doesn't allow us to look at it with other operating systems. Is there anything I can do to change that? I would like to be able to read it in Puppy, and perhaps even Win 7, but at least puppy.

I would be willing to reformat the drive and re-do the backups if necessary, but I also do not want to make a mess.

Thanks,
Les

[Semme]

Les- there was a recent thread involving hfsplus, I'm sure someone'll chime in.. I think modprobe'n mount..

[rcrsn51]

Plug it in and run "dmesg". Are there any messages about it?

Does Gparted see it?

[Les Kerf]

The following is what I "think" pertains to the GoFlex drive after typing
dmesg into the console. There was a ton of info, but I think it applied to other devices.

scsi7 : usb-storage 2-1.2:1.0
usb-storage: device found at 4
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access Seagate GoFlex Desk 0D19 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete
sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] 1953525167 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB)
sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 4f 00 00 00
sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: [mac] sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 sdb4
sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
usb 2-1.2: USB disconnect, address 4
tg3 0000:02:00.0: wake-up capability disabled by ACPI
tg3 0000:02:00.0: PME# disabled
tg3 0000:02:00.0: irq 29 for MSI/MSI-X
pcieport 0000:00:1c.0: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex
pcieport 0000:00:1c.0: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX
usb 1-1.2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
scsi8 : usb-storage 1-1.2:1.0
usb-storage: device found at 3
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access Seagate GoFlex Desk 0D19 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sd 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] 1953525167 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB)
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 4f 00 00 00
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: [mac] sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 sdb4
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

GParted does indeed recognize the GoFlex drive. I'm just not sure how to mount it.
Les

[Les Kerf]

Les- there was a recent thread involving hfsplus, I'm sure someone'll chime in.. I think modprobe'n mount..

I followed the provided link, and attempted to follow the instructions given. It appears that I did get the drive mounted, but it doesn't give an icon and I have no clue as to how I would look inside something that I cannot see.

The reason I "think" it is mounted, is because when I try to umount, I get a message saying "can't umount /mnt/macosx: Device or resource busy"

What to do?
Les

[Les Kerf]

By following the link provided by Semme, and some additional advice from Semme, I was able to mount the drive and "sort of" look inside, but the only files I could actually read were the e-mails (ASCII mode only).

Any ideas as to how I might mount this as read/write?
Les

[rcrsn51]

If you don't mind losing everything on the drive, reformat it as something else. You would need to pick a format that both the iMac and Puppy can read - maybe NTFS?

Or maybe put two partitions on it - one for each OS.

[Les Kerf]

If you don't mind losing everything on the drive, reformat it as something else. You would need to pick a format that both the iMac and Puppy can read - maybe NTFS?

Or maybe put two partitions on it - one for each OS.

Yup, that's what I did. I re-formatted it as NTFS, so now it acts like a 1TB thumb drive. Perfect
I'll mark this solved.
Thanks for the help,
Les