Auto-detect & mount disk partitions and removable drives

I use ubuntu in addition to my current wip of installing arch linux.Now i have installed lxde desktop. But i am not able to see any of my partitions of my disk and other hdd. Besides removable drives also dont get mounted.
Similarly if a new partition is created the same also gets autodetected in ubuntu. eg my arch linux partition. I need not go to do any fiddling in the system to recognize the same.
So is it possible to achieve the same under archlinux?So want to know how to get the same done.
what i want is to have the partitions[ext & ntfs] detected when the filemanager is opened and mount/unmount at my will, just as i do now in ubuntu.
So far what i have done is based on the lxde wiki, i installed the polkit-gnome gvfs package but nothing is mounted.
i would like to have specific instructions to how to work out and get the above done.
pls guide to the same.
Last edited by beopen (2012-08-12 12:55:15)

cfr wrote :
What do you mean when you say that pcmanfm is not displaying *any* partitions? You see no files at all? Or do you mean: it is not showing partitions not listed in /etc/fstab?
I mean it is not showing partitions not listed in /etc/fstab. As of now pcmanfm shows only the arch systems partitions which I created while installation : root, and home. Balance of partitions of other systems of the same drive and second hard drive is not shown.
When you say that in Ubuntu, newly created partitions show up automatically, do you mean that if you change the partitioning on your internal drive, the changes are automatically reflected in /etc/fstab?
Yes the changes are automatically reflected in the filemanager of ubuntu, ie. Nautilius. However Ubuntu fstab as you see in the previous post of mine contains no entry to other partitions other than just ubuntus.In the fstab I posted above you can very well see it just shows 4 partitions of hdd1 [similar to the way the arch fstab shows only its own] where it is installed :boot,root,home, swap. Whereas there is two more partitions there viz windows and a ntfs. You don’t see them in fstab, but when you open the nautilius filemanager you can see the drives. See the image link of my filemanger posted below at the end. In that shared data and windows are two ntfs partition of hdd1 where ubuntu is installed. Arch is installed on 2nd hdd alongwith a Ubuntu.289gb partition is a ubuntu LVM along with arch root and arch home you can see.
If you mean that Ubuntu automatically adds, mounts and unmounts partitions on removable drives when e.g. a USB stick is inserted or when you change the partitioning on one and create a file system, that you can configure to work automatically in arch.
Yes ubuntu automatically adds, mounts and unmounts partitions on internal drives and also removable drives when e.g. a USB stick is inserted . As you can see in the image i have posted, it shows all my internal drive partitions automatically. No fstab editing nothing. No fiddling with system files so far i have done in ubuntu. For eg i installed arch a month back, the same you can see is automatically seen in the image. All i required was to update grub to recognise árch'. Post that when you boot, automatically the new arch partitions are seen. No fstab fiddling anything. Thus tomorrow morning if i create a new partition on my hdd via ubuntu all i require is to reboot post the creation and i will see the new partition asap.
As you can see in the image all my partitions are seen, the one i want i click it and it gets mounted, if i dont want it stays/gets unmounted. And its not just ubuntu i saw the same in some other distros also like suse,centos,fedora.
As far as the lxde wiki is concerned, there it is mentioned to install polkit gnome gvfs for mounting and i did the same but nothing still happens.
So this is what exactly i am asking how to do the same on my arch system. So if i am guided i wil go ahead and work to achieve the same.
image link of file manager : NautiliusFileManager
Last edited by beopen (2012-08-15 13:00:26)

Similar Messages

Mac wont mount disk images, and fails to auto detect some usb devices.

for some reason, all of a sudden, my mac won't mount disks. even disks I know in the past have worked.
also, it wont auto detect some external devices. especially jump drives and hard drives and audio interfaces. It has to be rebooted with the the devices connected.
I know its not a hardware problem, because everything runs smooth in windows on this computer.
I did some extensive cleaning recently, and installed a lot of new stuff, but i don't know what could be causing this.
any help would be greatly apreciated!

This USB faq may help.
An SMC reset may help you mount disks.
 DALE

How do I remove disk partition and merge the 2 partitions into main hard disk C drive. Win7

How do I remove a disk partition and merge the 2 partitions into main hard disk C drive. If I delete Drive D I am left with 250G of unallocated space in drive D Hard drive. And I want the unallocated portion 250G to be allocated
to the C drive.jc

I know it is a little bit late to reply. But, I still want to share my experiences with everyone here.
Actually, I have ever also has the same issue and needed to resize my C drive partition for much more partition space. But, the resizing process just unexpectedly fails at last in Disk Management. The “extend” function is unable to work.
So, I have no choice but to take chances with some third party partition resizing tools:
GParted
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
IM-Magic Partition Resizer Free
http://www.resize-c.com/
Both of them seem efficient. So, I just have tried them one by one and finally added wanted free space to my C drive successfully.
I even have found a video tutorial that teaches me how to resize my drive with this freeware in details:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jCeT7CbsKk

We have created two partitions in removable drive(USB). One of the partition is active and the other is hidden. We are trying to acess the hidden partition in Win PE 3.0 environment using WMI

We have created two partitions in removable drive(USB). One of the partition is active and the other is hidden. We are trying to access the hidden partition in Win PE 3.0 environment using WMI. VBScript code snippet used to detect the partitions is given
below:-
SetobjWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:"_&
"{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\"&
strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
SetcolDisks = objWMIService.ExecQuery
Select * from Win32_LogicalDisk")
It will return the partition which is active but fails to list the partition which is hidden. The same piece of code was supported on WinPE 2.0

I am giving the complete code, may be you are able to understand better. We are using Win32_LogicalDisk to retrieves the complete information of all the drives (like C:, D:) including removable drives.
Function
LocalDriveFound()
    strComputer =
SetobjWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:"_
"{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\"&
strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
SetcolDisks = objWMIService.ExecQuery
"Select * from Win32_LogicalDisk")
ForEachDiskDrive
IncolDisks
        DriveLetter = Left(DiskDrive.Name,1)
        DriveType = DiskDrive.DriveType
        VolumeName = DiskDrive.VolumeName
        WScript.echo Driveletter &
"|"& Drivetype &
"|"&VolumeName
SelectCaseDriveType
Case2 ,3
'Fixed or removable
If(VolumeName=USBVolumeName)
Then
If(DriveLetter<>
"Z")
Then
                    ChangeDriveLetterWithMountvol DriveLetter,
"Z"
EndIf
                bIsLocal=
True
EndIf
If(VolumeName=USBRootName)
Then
If(DriveLetter<>
"Y")
Then
                    ChangeDriveLetterWithMountvol DriveLetter,
"Y"
EndIf
                bIsLocal=
True
EndIf
CaseElse
EndSelect
Next
SetDrives =
Nothing
SetFileSystemObject =
Nothing
End
Function

[Solved] unable to mount harddisk partition or flash drive

After recent updates to gnome 3.4.2,i am unable to mount harddisk partition or flash drive .I have 2 year old arch installation with gnome.
When i click on partitions in nautilus,it says "Unable to mount program files \n Not authorized to perform operation"
Problem is not only while mounting partitions.
Wherever we need authorization .Like changing date and time ,changing user accounts using gnome UI etc.The unlock button is greyed out permanently.
even i am not able to shutdown using gnome menus. it just log me out only ,do not restart or shutdown.Though i can shutdown using shutdown command on commandline.
i run gnome using daemon method. not through xinitrc .
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/25031?p … ekit#close
I found a similar discussion in this bug. But since, i do not use xinitrc, it is unlikely they will help me.
Can someone be kind enough to help me on this?
Thanks in advance.
Last edited by piyushbhatt (2012-09-11 05:48:57)

maybe changes in udev or any other package
you have polkit polkit-gnome
and you user is in optical, disks and wheel groups?
for me those above work in every sitation

Why did my event library stopped showing my partitions and external drives?

The event library stopped recognizing my computer partitions and my external hardrive. It looks like all events are available, just not organized by partitions and drives. The partitions and external drive still show up in the project library.

I don't see anything like what you mentioned... " having a folder at the root level that emulates a camera, a folder with a name like DCIM or Private." Here are the windows showing the files on the user/HD, the tutorial image and the external drive. You can see the Final Cut Folders in each. In the past, I would see each of these in the Event Library so I could create a new event wherever I want to store it. I have also included a screen shot of FCPX showing the Project Library. It still shows the various devices, as I am used to seeing in the Event Library.

Slave drive, CDs, USB drives, Disk Images and FW drives fail to mount

Hi. I have two Maxtor internal hard drives (6Y160P0 and 6Y120P0), the second of which (6Y120P0) all of a sudden will not mount on the desktop. When I reboot my Mac, I get two identical error windows that state, “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer”, with options to initialize, ignore, or eject. (There are no other drives of any type connected to the computer).
Within Disk Utility (when run from the primary hard drive), the slave drive shows up, but its icon is dimmed. Clicking the “Mount” button does nothing. Disk First Aid does not allow one to “Repair Permissions” nor “Repair Disk”, presumably since it won’t mount (eg, these options are dimmed). One odd aspect about Disk Utility is that the master and slave drive are listed as “disk0s10” and “disk1s10”, respectively, rather than the way they usually show up with the names I’ve given them. Yet on the desktop the working master drive shows up with its given name.
When I run Disk Itility from a CD, both internal drives look fine, accept repairs, and the drives are listed by their proper names.
As another interesting clue, all of the Disk Images (stored on the working master internal hard drive) that I have attempted to mount fail to open as well. When I doubleclick them, I get an error that reads, “The following disk images failed to mount: Reason: No mountable file systems”.
Two different USB keychains fail to mount; my FW drive fails to mount.
I’ve run Applejack Auto Restart without any difficulty several times.
Apple's Hardware check CD says all is AOK.
I’ve rebuilt this problematic disk (and the master) several times with Disk Warrior 3.03 and all is supposedly AOK.
SmartReporter says both disks are fine.
TechTool Pro 4.1.2 has run the following checks on the problem disk and these are AOK: Disk Controller, SMART, Read/Write.
All of this makes me wonder if the issue is with my system software, rather than the slave disk??? Interestingly, CDs refuse to mount as well when I've booted from the primary hard drive (but I don't think it is the CD drive itself since I can boot from the CD drive). This, coupled with the fact that disk images won't mount, makes me now think it is an OS issue rather than hardware.
Any suggestions about what I can do to salvage and fix this problem would be greatly appreciated!
G4/867MHz running OS 10.4.8

If anyone else is having this problem, check out the totally awesome post by GNJ to my similar query on the MacFixIt forums:
Drives and Disk Images refuse to mount
http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=tiger&Number=791320&Forum= &Words=CharPatton&Match=Username&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Old=6months&Main=791320&S earch=true#Post791320
His suggestion to run the 10.4.8 combined PPC update worked like a charm and solved the problem perfectly!
PS If you are having the same issue, there is the problem that one can't use a USB/FW drive to get the combo updater onto the problematic hard drive, and even if you can, the faulty software won't allow one to mount a .dmg image. This can be solved by using "Target" mode, eg connect the problematic CPU to a working CPU (in this case, my PowerBook) via a FW cable, then boot up the problem CPU while holding down the letter "t". One can then drag the combined updater unstuffed file (eg, not the .dmg) directly to the problematic disk from the working CPU. Then, when I booted in the problematic disk/CPU, all it took was a doubleclick on the unstuffed updater and all was fine.

After errors with disk partition, I removed Windows from my iMac. Now when I start my computer it goes into a black screen and not straight into the Mac area like it used to, unless I hold Alt straight away to give me the option. Any help?

Hi,
Sorry, I'm new to the community, so apologies if I'm repeating myself.
OK, so I tried to install Windows Vista onto my iMac with the disk partition. Everything was going fine and it wasn't until last minute, when it was installed that an error came up saying that this can only be done with Windows 7. After this error, I couldn't access any errors of my iMac and when I shut down and restarted my computer, it automatically logged into Windows.
So after a panic, I rang Apple Care and the lady helped me log into my apple area, delete Windows from my iMac, and all was restored.
However, now when I shut down my computer and boot it back up, I think my iMac is trying to log into Windows areas that no longer exist. It loads up a black screen and doesn't move from there. To log into my Apple area, I have to do the whole process of holding Alt immediately after I switch the power on and access the Mac drive and log in that way.
It's beginning to become a real pain and I'm paranoid this process is going to damage my computer. Any advice on how to restore logging-in back to it's former glory when I first purchased it?
Thanks

Solved it. Thank you very much for that!

Removing a Bootcamp Partition and restoring drive fully to OS X

Hi all
I currently have a small partition on my 27' imac allocated to Bootcamp which I now no longer require. I would like to remove this partition and restore the complete drive back to OSX without losing any vital info.
Yes, I have done research on this however I remain a little confused. I would be grateful if someone would take the trouble to confirm that this is possible and, if they have the time, write a simple step by step procedure for me.
Thank you
Kindest regards
Ian

Allan
Thank you for your very quick reply, I do appreciate it.
As you may of read into my initial question I am not that confident in making changes to my system, in my profession as a photographer I have a lot of critical images that I cannot afford to lose.
I see within the Bootcamp Assistant I can remove the option to remove the Windows partition but I am not sure of the steps I further need to complete to restore the drive completely to the OS X system. Currently I have 100GB partitioned to Windows and I would like this space be available for my work.
Any step-by-step guide you can provide me would be very much appreciated.
Thank you again
Kindest regards
Ian

My external drives no longer appear in Finder, BUT they do appear in Disk Utility (and network drives appear also)

Hi folks, I hope someone can assist. I have a Mac Mini 2011 running 10.8.5. All has been well. Suddenly, when I plugged in an external flash drive (USB), nothing showed up in Finder. Things I have done:
Confirmed SideBar and other Finder preferences are set to show/reveal external, network, and internal HDs
Tried multiple flash drives and hard drives, using drives formated in GUID/OSXExtended as well as FAT and NTSF. None show up.
Confirmed that the Hidden flag in terminal is not set.
Note: I can see the drives in Disk Utility, but the partitions/volumes are gray and will not be mounted.
Note: Network drives and internal drives appear and work as expected
Note: My network Time Machine also appears and performs as expected.
The only suspect I can think of is a small, free app I installed this morning called Caffein (which manages the sleep mode).
Also, I loged out and switched to another user account on the same machine (that I use solely for the purpose of troubleshooting), and it was similarly affected.
Thanks in advance!
Dave

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It makes no changes to your data.
Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
diskutil list | pbcopy
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear below what you entered.
The output of the command will be automatically copied to the Clipboard. If the command produced no output, the Clipboard will be empty. Paste into a reply to this message.
The Terminal window doesn't show the output. Please don't copy anything from there.
If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

Mounting disks/partitioning. Alternatives to fstab?

I wanted to be able to separate the OS, Applications and Users and had found an excellent article by Justin (Ref: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040716153639236). But now with Snow Leopard, fstab has been discontinued and this won't work
Is there any alternate solution to achieve the same as I would want to
1. Install OS in a separate partition
2. Put swap in separate partition (this is still doable but here I'm not looking for pro's con's of doing this)
* the above two would significantly help reduce disk fragmentation I suppose as the main reason for me to do this is, once the disk is near full, performance goes for a toss and getting tired of seeing rainbow circles
3. Put the /Applications in a different partition (may be on the same disk as root)
4. Put /Users on to second disk
Looking for some pointers as well as some insight into how the partitions are handled in Snow Leopard.
Thanks in advance,
-Kesari.

Thanks to every one of you who helped me with the answer. In particular KJK555's comment wrt fstab as well as pointers suggested by R C-R. It was a good reading and indeed a good learning experience for me as this provided quite a bit of insight into Mac for coming from Solaris/Linux. Also, my boot time is under 36 secs with all my apps, initialization with toshiba 500gb 7200rpm disk (would scream if I could get a ssd I suppose. But with mbp, have to live with one disk unless I forego my dvd drive).
Now, to answer why I did this or rather why I wanted to do this extra (unwanted ?) steps:
I can't religiously monitor my disk usage and putting all under one partition, install, uninstall applications etc and I would figure out that either /tmp run out of space or system crash and take for ever to reboot and then end up finding what I can part with and where to squeeze in space from
Now at least by keeping root partion out of all these hassle, I'm safe as I won't run out of space in /.
Another immediate benefit I could think of is, I don't need regular backup of most of the partitions and take only selective ones. In particular of some one is using vmware or virtualbox and set up timemachine, they would love to have this as only they know the pain. Now it's simple. Just put all the vm's in one partition and setup snapshot from the vm onto another partition and take the initial backup of the vm's partition and just setup time machine for the snapshot area. I could go on with advantages but would leave it for other's imagination. Video editing folks !!!
Coming to mistakes or rather my learning experience.
The suggestions in macosxhints works very much except for the fstab changes and here's some tips for those who's looking for this info:
1. The mounting order is always not the same i.e. don't expect /dev/disk0s3 to be mounted as /whatever. This never works. Mount using the UUID instead.
2. Do not try to mount / from fstab and just leave it to the OS. For that matter, just mount those you need it different and leave the rest (in my case now it's only Applications and Users)
3. Trying to add swap or moving it around to a different partition is waste of time as I didn't find any significant gain by doing this. Rather I think by doing this you will be limiting the swap size to the partition size. Now that / is good enough (40gb is quite a lot once you move /Applications out) and this gives excellent leg space for swap or any files in /
4. Not sure but I think this is due to the way OS initializes/uses Applications folder. When I tried to put Applications on to a different disk, it doesn't seem to like it and felt boot time was more as well as login/initialization time. But works fine after boot. Don't think this is a stopper as I have plenty of space to put in Applications on the first drive containing root.
Now I'm going to reinstall (3rd attempt) as with this experiment, found that I may not need such a huge root and (redundant) swap partitions. Little more to my /Users. Here's my planned allocation: root 20gb, alternate root 20gb (for future use), Applications 120gb, Users 120gb, data 200gb.
Once again thanks to all of you for this information.
Wouldn't it be slick, if Apple would produce a 4 or six core Developer's edition MacBook Pro with
up to 16GB of ram and one of WD's new 600GB 10,000 rpm 2.5 inch Velociraptor as standard
equipment?
This would be my dream MBP and would be the first one to buy if it's under $1500

Can i create a disk partition and install SL onto it from my disks I got with my iMac

I want to start learning how to use the Terminal and how to start inputting and outputting data via the Terminal. I thought that I could create a small partition on my hard drive and then install Snow Leopard onto that partition (so that while I was learning how to use Terminal commands I would not wreck anything.)
It then occurred to me that by doing this I would also learn how to install OS X.
Can I do this?
Does the disks I got with my iMac have a limited number of installs? Because if they do I don't want to use them up in case I have to reinstall at any point in the future.
Do those disks have a full version of OS X Snow Leopard on them, or are they just for repairing the version on my system?
If I was to create a partition, when I delete that partition will I automatically get back the space?
Is what I want to do hard?
Can someone please give me some guidance before I begin doing this?
Many thanks
Jason

The OS X Install Disc that came with your computer is just that a full licensed copy of OS X for your system, it can be installed as many times as you would like but it will ONLY work on your machine. The only limitation to those discs that I'm aware of is they are machine specific.
My suggestion would be to get an external HD and use the Install Disc to install OS X on the external. Don't get a cheap USB drive, get the fastest drive (at the moment that would be Firewire 800) you can get. Drives I'd recommend are Lacie Quadra d2 series, G-Tech G-Series and OWC (www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro series. This would be a much wiser strategy than partitioning your internal drive, that way if you real create a major mess it won't affect your internal HD.
Roger

Hard disks, partitions and Mac Pro

Hi all,
I'm new to the Mac Pro and am migrating from a Windows environment, I have used a iBook for the past 6 months and this is the reason for totally migrating to a Mac Desktop.
I have spent half a day on browsing the forum here, very confusing I must say but then again I add that I am an absolute a-technical person.
I have a few questions on storage which I hope might get answered here;
My Hardware:
I am about to order a 2,66ghz Mac Pro, 4GB Ram, XP1900 and a 160Gb hard disk will will be replaced as soon as the Mac Pro enters my dwelling.
My Work Environment:
Apart from the basic office things, Internet, Mail and such I will use the mac Pro 90% for Imaging purposes. Most used applications:
- CS2
- Aperture
- Adobe Lightroom
as well as a number of add-ons like HDR programs, Noise programs, RAW converters etc.
I am a Photographer working with Mid-format and Standard format images, which in some case, like when using HDR can reach sizes of well over 150-200Mb per image!
Useually the image size of a 16bit mid-format tiff are around 70MB.
Now for the question, how to configure the best possible HD setup.
I will use WinXP, which I would like to run on a seperate partition/disk
I need a schratch disk for CS2
I need roughly 500GB of intermediate storage for imgaes before the periodically get back-up to external hard disk.
So I was thinking the following, and this only based upon how I used my Win Environment:
150GB Raptor as start-up disk and location for programs and OSX as well as basic documents and files
76GB Raptor as Scratchdisk
500GB as WinXp disk (30%) and rest as storage for Image cataloging system (mainly normal sized Jpegs)
750GB as Image tank
I have the Raptors, but don't have to use them if a better solution comes out. Since I will be using my Win pc until everythink works satisfactory on the Mac...
some remarks:
I have red about raid, both 0 and 1 seem interesting but I will loose out on disk space possibilities, and will be forced to work with external drives again, which I don't like... but if push comes to shove I will do that.
sorry for the information overload, and maybe all points have been answered in other threads before, but whilst browsing through hundreds of threads I couldn't see the forest becasue of the trees anymore.
One last comment, I make my living with photography so a good setup is of vital importance ....
Kindest regards, and many thanks in advance

Hi all,
Hi,
Now for the question, how to configure the best
possible HD setup.
IMO; use a 3 drive RAID 0 for your boot, application, and
data partition - my style would be all in one big partition
and just segragate stuff with folders. I would then add 2
USB or FireWire drives. One for backing up your system
and one for the windows XP if you just have to have windows
running on your MacPro. They don't run at the same time you
know - like on Amiga where MacOS, Windows, and AmigaOS all
multitasked together in shared memory space simultainiously.
As such my opinion is that it's better to keep your WinTel
box on a KBM switch and LAN the two together.
I will use WinXP, which I would like to run on a
seperate partition/disk
I need a schratch disk for CS2
With a 3 drive RAID your disk I/O is between 3 and 20 times
the speed of a single drive setup so separate cache drive
isn't really advantagious. Click on the link below and
scroll down to the Drive Test area:
http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=199338&doc2=195252
Both are my profiles. One with a single drive, and one
with a 3-drive raid. No other differences.
I need roughly 500GB of intermediate storage for
imgaes before the periodically get back-up to
external hard disk.
So I was thinking the following, and this only based
upon how I used my Win Environment:
150GB Raptor as start-up disk and location for
programs and OSX as well as basic documents and
files
76GB Raptor as Scratchdisk
500GB as WinXp disk (30%) and rest as storage for
Image cataloging system (mainly normal sized Jpegs)
750GB as Image tank
I have the Raptors, but don't have to use them if a
better solution comes out. Since I will be using my
Win pc until everythink works satisfactory on the
Mac...
IMO the Raptors are overpriced. If it were me I would sell
them. I think the two together will pay for all three 320
or 300 gig RAID drives. I did some research regarding which
drives are good in a Mac RAID environment and I ended up
going for the the MaxLine Maxtor drives (even though I hate
Maxtor usually). So far I'm very happy with them and the
fact that they are like one of the most inexpensive drives
you can get didn't hurt either.
I think that if a person REALLY needs the speed offered by
Raptor drives and is willing to pay the difference for it
then they should just get a dedicated RAID card which offers
even more of a speed increase!!!
some remarks:
I have red about raid, both 0 and 1 seem interesting
but I will loose out on disk space possibilities, and
will be forced to work with external drives again,
which I don't like... but if push comes to shove I
will do that.
You don't lose any space if you use just RAID 0. If there
are three 300gig HDs that format individually to 260gig
each then in a RAID 0 configuration you would have 780gigs.

Disk Images and External Drives - PLEASE HELP

Hi all,
I've got to a point where i can't afford to keep buying expensive drives to work form with Final Cut Pro X so decided to just work from several high spec drives and then back them up on other cheaper drives, reformat the high spec ones and start again.
Not really understanding how disk imaging works I hoped I could carbon copy mountable and read and writeable drives (in this case a thunderbolt lace SSD) on to a cheaper mass storage, wipe it and start again. I hoped it would then appear on the drives top level just as the drive appears on my desktop, and that I could access it if needed or port it back to a single drive at a later date? Is this possible? Can anyone help? So far everything I've tried has failed.
One thought I did have was to create several partitions on the cheaper mass drive and duplicate it on to there? But I can't find any help or instruction for this online and need to make sure its write before I go deleting old projects.
Attached are a picture of what I have (the disk image file) and what I was hoping to create (a mountable replica of a working drive on an external HD)
Any help greatly appreciated.
Robin

You can research the terms disk image and back up for several hours. That might not help.
None of the back up routines I am aware for for video and large media files use any compression or bundling systems like .dmg. I think your best bet is to make one-to-one copies of your files to your cheap drives. If you need the older projects, you copy them back to your working drives. That's pretty much how it's always been unless you are have a nice NAS RAID with mirroring to another rack of drives.
The problem with cheap mass storage is no that it's unreliable. It's just not QUITE as reliable as more expensive systems. Having a copy of your work on a disk that might or is likely to fail is almost the same as not having a backup at all. but there is a point of diminishing returns for all of us in this business. This trend toward 4k and 8k, and FCPX's inability to manage media efficiently, means we all must add TB of storage for every project. A friend of mine includes a couple of TB drives in his fees. The client pays for and gets the drives.

Mount my dvd and Cd drives

I have both cd and dvd burning drives, and ever since I first installed arch they've been innaccesable, and their contenst invisible.
Two cd drives (one too many) and a dvd drive are listed in /media, but I can't see any of their contents.
Something I used to be able to do using nautilus (I'm using whatever xfce4 comes with now) in ubuntu.
I've tried
mount -t auto /dev/dvd /media/dvd
But I get told to specify the filesystem type. Which I don't know, and probably varies accross different types of cdrom and dvdrom.
I'd like to be able to see, and use, both my cd and dvd drives for movies, music, and burning. And I'd like to be able to see their contents easily in the termnal or the file broswer.
Any help would be appreciated, I don't want to use Ubuntu

Forgot to mention - I've been using root, which is in the optical group.
It didn't work, and just told me to specify the filesystem type again.
My fstab says:
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /media/cdrom1 auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
/dev/dvd /media/dvd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
Again, one to many cdrom entries, but I don't know which one is correct.
hal is currently added to the deamons to run at startup.
Last edited by desm (2009-03-01 16:22:54)

Auto-detect & mount disk partitions and removable drives

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for