lalawawa wrote:

> On Jul 4, 6:05 pm, Roby <r...@no-address.net> wrote:
>> lalawawa wrote:
>> > Hi, I just bought a 400Mbyte usb disk.
>>
>> > My OS is Ubuntu version 5, I've recently done the updates to it.
>>
>> > My computer is a Sony VAIO PCV-RX270DS that I bought in 2001, with
>> > about 400Mbytes of disk and the usb port is USB 1 (that manual doesn't
>> > say which USB version because I think USB 2.0 wasn't out yet). The
>> > disk is connected through a hub.
>>
>> > The drive is a 400GB Simpletech drive. The specifications make it
>> > clear it's USB 1.1 compatible. All the online technical support
>> > assumes you're on Windows.
>>
>> > When I turn on the disk, it appears in the /media directory by the
>> > filename ' simpletech ' (not spaces before and after the name). The
>> > fstab entry that appears is
>>
>> > /dev/sda /media/usb0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
>>
>> > If I cd to /media and do 'ls -ld \ simpletech\ ', I get
>> > dr-x------ 1 wulluw wulluw 4096 2007-02-20 10:25 simpletech
>> > if I go into that directory and do 'ls -la' I get
>> > total 8
>> > dr-x------ 1 wulluw wulluw 4096 2007-02-20 10:25 .
>> > drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 2007-07-04 14:20 ..
>> > dr-x------ 1 wulluw wulluw 0 2007-02-20 10:25 System Volume
>> > Information
>> > if I try 'touch a' it says
>> > touch: cannot touch `a': Read-only file system
>> > if I try 'sudo touch a' it still says
>> > touch: cannot touch `a': Read-only file system
>> > I cd back to /media
>> > $ chmod +w \ simpletech\ /
>> > chmod: changing permissions of ` simpletech /': Read-only file system
>> > $ sudo chmod +w \ simpletech\ /
>> > chmod: changing permissions of ` simpletech /': Read-only file system
>>
>> > Why is it saying the filesystem is readonly when /etc/fstab clearly
>> > says it's rw? What do I have to do to get the disk mounted rw? A
>> > 400GB readonly disk with nothing on it isn't very useful.
>>
>> > Any help would be appreciated.
>>
>> > Bill
>>
>> My guess: the drive is formatted ntfs and the "auto" in the fstab entry
>> is causing linux to load the ntfs driver (rather than ntfs-3g). The
>> drive will be painfully slow at usb 1.1. usb2 pci cards are cheap and
>> do a great job.
>
> I would like to put in a USB 2.0 board, but I absolutely, positively
> don't want to make any hardware changes to my box until I'm able to
> back up.
>
> In the past, I would back up on CD-ROM using K3B. Then suddenly,
> probably as a result of an upgrade, neither K3B nor the CD-ROM Creator
> software are able to find my CD burner. Here's my fstab:
>
> $ cat /etc/fstab
> # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
> #
> # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
> proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
> /dev/mapper/Ubuntu-root / ext3
> defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
> /dev/hda1 /boot ext3 defaults 0 2
> /dev/mapper/Ubuntu-swap_1 none swap sw
> 0 0
> /dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
> /dev/hdd /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
> /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
> /dev/sda /media/usb0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
> $
> $ df
> Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/mapper/Ubuntu-root
> 37079744 12680436 22515764 37% /
> tmpfs 193436 0 193436 0% /dev/shm
> tmpfs 193436 12588 180848 7% /lib/modules/
> 2.6.12-10-386/volatile
> /dev/hda1 233335 19153 201734 9% /boot
> /dev/sda1 390708800 77912 390630888 1% /media/
> simpletech
> $
> but I don't think upgrading to a 2.0 port is going to change the
> permissions of the disk. I think all that would be accomplished by
> upgrading to USB 2.0 would be to change my slow 400GB readonly disk
> with nothing on it to a fast 400GB disk with nothing on it.
First let's confirm that your external drive is formatted ntfs:
$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

Yes, it's ntfs. So try mounting it using the ntfs-3g driver:
$ ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/usb0

If successful, you finally have write privilege.

If not, you need to install that driver. I don't use Ubuntu
so don't know the details. Once installed, change fstab to:
/dev/sda1 /media/usb0 ntfs-3g rw,user,noauto 0 0
Note that it's sda1, not sda.

I agree that a recent backup promotes sanity. Doing it at
12megabits/sec will provide time to clean the garage, etc.
It will make you appreciate usb2.0 later. You'll see.

I reformatted my external drives to ext3. Better.

Roby