[ubuntu-uk] Does anyone have experience with using a usb hard drive docking station with Ubuntu?

Barry Drake ubuntu-advertising at gmx.com
Mon Dec 5 13:50:20 UTC 2011


On 05/12/11 13:41, javadayaz wrote:
> Im thinking of attaching a couple of old hard drives to my laptop. How 
> nice does Ubuntu play with a docking station? Will it need any extra 
> software.
> Also, can you please recommend a cheap as chips docking station? I 
> have two hard drives so maybe a double hard drive.Some extra info: The 
> hard drives are from a old Pc which ran ubuntu. Will this cause any 
> conflicts when hooking up to a newer ubuntu version? --

If the hard drives are old, the are most likely to be IDE rather than 
SATA.  You may have difficulty getting an external USB adaptor that will 
allow you to use them.  Look on e-bay and Amazon for what you can get.

If you are able to get them running with an external adaptor, Ubuntu 
will recognise them as USB hard drives, and mount them just fine.  You 
say they already have Ubuntu on them - if you want to use the old 
version from the USB hard drive this is possible with most modern 
laptops.  You have to go into the BIOS settings to tell the laptop to 
boot from a USB drive.  If you don't want to use the old Ubuntu, just 
use gparted to re-format the drives to ext4 and you will be just fine.  
If you want the drives to be able to be seen by Windows, re-format to NTFS.

Regards,        Barry.

-- Barry Drake is a member of the the Ubuntu Advertising team. 
http://ubuntuadverts.org/



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