[Tfug] FYI: Segate 500 GB USB hard drive

[Bexley Hall]

Hi Earl,

> I recently bought a 500 GB Segate
> hard drive from Office Max at a fairly

Costco was pushing 1.5T drives for $109 last week...

> good price.  I hooked it up to my Ubuntu 9.10 box and
> it was immediately
> recognized.  I copied a few files to it and it
> unmounted itself.  It was
> completely gone with no trace ... including lsusb not
> seeing it.

Did you try unplugging and replugging it (i.e., to see if
it would be re-recognized)?  Did the drive spin down?
(I think the seacrates *do* spin down when unmounted)
 
> I quit 9.10 and booted into Ubuntu 8.04 with the same
> results.  I then
> tried the drive on a box with Mandriva 2010 with the same
> results.  My
> laptop running 8.04 gave the same results.

*Clearly* "Operator Error"!  ;-)
 
> I returned the drive and got another one.  I tried the
> new one with the
> sme results.  In a moment of desparation I hooked up
> to my XP box I use
> for my MagicJack phone.  It worked fine and was up for
> a day.  I'm not
> sure but I think XP added a few files.  Anyeay, I

XP pulled files *from* the drive?
Or, XP added files *to* the drive?
(I suspect the former)

> tried it on the linux
> boxes and everything works great now.  It has been up
> for 4 days on Ubuntu
> 9.10.  Strange fix but I thought someone else might
> run into this situation.

While I could see that something like this is *possible*
(for a device manufacturer to do), I'm not sure I understand
why it would be *desirable* (from their point).  Unless the
drive doesn't look like a "simple" mass storage device...
(I think they have firmware that tries to make them
smarter -- spin down automatically after a period, etc.)