External Backup Device - WD Passport Portable HDD

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server SLES Configure-Administer
1

After going through quite a lot to install SLES, Oracle and other goodies, I’d like to back it up. So today I bought a WD Passport 500GB. I was promised by the Fry’s Electronics guy that it was compatible with Linux. Guess what? The WD Passport web site doesn’t seem to support anything other than Windows and very little Apple.

Anyone out here setup a WD Passport type product on Linux with success, and with software that can perform a regular backup, and retrieval?

My many thanks, Jay

If this post is in the wrong group, my apologizes.

2

Hi
That sales person saw you coming :wink:

So does the device mount? Plug it in (then as root user);

mount
tail -n 12 /var/log/messages

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.2 (x86_64) Kernel 3.4.6-2.10-desktop
up 1 day 2:51, 3 users, load average: 0.09, 0.19, 0.36
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU

3

Yes, you can mount it, access the drive, see some files on it, and also see the properties, it’s a TNFS-3g FS. I’m not surprised by any of that, I just want Linux backup software that can work with it as a BU device.

Prometheus:/home/jpquinn> mount
/dev/sda6 on / type ext3 (rw,acl,user_xattr)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,mode=1777)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=0620,gid=5)
/dev/sda2 on /windows/C type fuseblk (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096,default_permissions)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/jpquinn/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=jpquinn)
/dev/sdf1 on /media/My Passport type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096)

Prometheus:/home/jpquinn> tail -n 12 /var/log/messages
Oct 2 13:08:44 Prometheus ntfs-3g[4351]: ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup: magic: 0x00000000 size: 4096 usa_ofs: 0 usa_count: 65535: Invalid argument
Oct 2 13:08:44 Prometheus ntfs-3g[4351]: Index buffer (VCN 0x0) of directory inode 41 has a size (24) differing from the directory specified size (4096).
Oct 2 13:28:44 Prometheus – MARK –
Oct 2 13:31:50 Prometheus smartd[3682]: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 115 to 114
Oct 2 13:51:50 Prometheus – MARK –
Oct 2 14:01:34 Prometheus syslog-ng[1479]: Log statistics; dropped=‘pipe(/dev/xconsole)=0’, dropped=‘pipe(/dev/tty10)=0’, processed=‘center(queued)=340’, processed=‘destination(mailinfo)=9’, processed=‘destination(mailwarn)=0’, processed=‘destination(localmessages)=10’, processed=‘destination(newserr)=0’, processed=‘destinati(warn)=20’, processed=‘destination(console)=16’, processed=‘destination(null)=2’, processed=‘destination(mail)=9’, processed=‘destination(xconsole)=16’, processed=‘stination(newscrit)=0’, processed=‘destination(newsnotice)=0’, processed=‘source(src)=269’
Oct 2 14:31:48 Prometheus – MARK –
Oct 2 14:51:48 Prometheus – MARK –
Oct 2 15:01:34 Prometheus syslog-ng[1479]: Log statistics; dropped=‘pipe(/dev/xconsole)=0’, dropped=‘pipe(/dev/tty10)=0’, processed=‘center(queued)=357’, processed=‘destination(mailinfo)=16’, processed=‘destination(mailwarn)=0’, processed=‘destination(localmessages)=10’, processed=‘destination(newserr)=0’, processed=‘destinatn(warn)=20’, processed=‘destination(console)=16’, processed=‘destination(null)=2’, processed=‘destination(mail)=16’, processed=‘destination(xconsole)=16’, processeddestination(newscrit)=0’, processed=‘destination(newsnotice)=0’, processed=‘source(src)=279’
Oct 2 15:21:34 Prometheus – MARK –
Oct 2 15:41:48 Prometheus – MARK –
Oct 2 15:43:22 Prometheus su: (to root) jpquinn on /dev/pts/0

4

On 10/02/2012 01:04 PM, jpquinn wrote:[color=blue]

Yes, you can mount it, access the drive, see some files on it, and also
see the properties, it’s a TNFS-3g FS. I’m not surprised by any of that,
I just want Linux backup software that can work with it as a BU device.[/color]

NTFS permissions are completely different than *nix permissions. I’d
delete the NTFS partion (or shrink it down to next to nothing) then
create an EXT2 partition on it and do your backups there.

…Kevin

Kevin Miller
Juneau, Alaska
http://www.alaska.net/~atftb
“In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car.”

  • Lawrence Summers
5

[QUOTE=jpquinn;9245]After going through quite a lot to install SLES, Oracle and other goodies, I’d like to back it up. So today I bought a WD Passport 500GB. I was promised by the Fry’s Electronics guy that it was compatible with Linux. Guess what? The WD Passport web site doesn’t seem to support anything other than Windows and very little Apple.
[/QUOTE]

Fortunately you are trying to attach a drive to your server, not a web site. :wink: I have virtually every model WD passport ever made attached to some SuSE box or another. Just plug it in. It will work. The new Toshiba ones work fine as well.

The only limitation, and it is a limitation of USB 2.0, is maximum throughput of about 33 MB/sec. The newer USB 3.0 models I’ve gotten 80 MB/sec - of course provided the server HW has a USB 3.0 port.

– Bob

6

If you have multiple systems to backup take a serious look at the wonderful Linux SCSI target framework (tgt) project. Its fricken awesome. Turns anything with storage into an iSCSI auto loading tape library which your Linux box will happily use. We use it to create fake tape drives on virtual machines. If you implement tgt ON a VM on shared storage, you can even live move the “tape drive” through your cluster. Its a wonderful thing. If you use large blocks, tgt is very efficient, near the limits of the underlying file system.

– Bob