mount/unmount problem

[leegwebb]

Hi,

I've been using Fedora 7 about a month now. I also have some experience with Ubuntu and Mepis.

I have an external USB hard drive that is shared with Windows XP. My plan was to keep the OS's on the internal hard drive and store my data (songs, documents, etc) on the external one so that they could be used by either OS.

When I first started with Fedora, the problem was that whenever I rebooted, the drive would power off and stay off. I had to manually unplug it and replug it. Before I got a chance to do anything about it, an update came along that changed its behavior.

Now, it stays powered up during rebooting, but what happens next is inconsistent. Rarely, it automounts and works just as I would expect it to. Sometimes, the icon shows up on the desktop but when I try to access it I get the message that the drive "does not exist." In this case I can manually unmount and then remount it. Sometimes, not one but two icons show up on the desktop. In this case, the drive is mounted, but it is annoying (I am kind of OCD about my desktop). I can't trash either of the twin icons because the drive is mounted. If I unmount, one icon goes away, but I am denied access to remount through the other And sometimes, the icon is there but I get an error message that the drive "cannot be found." In this case, I am out of luck because it won't let me unmount/remount, because it claims the drive is not mounted.

Does anyone know why it behaves differently each time I reboot?

As you might guess, I would prefer a GUI solution if there is one.

Thanks

[tashirosgt]

You might get a gui solution once the problem is diagnosed. But to diagnose the prolbem, I think your best bet is to look the logs (/var/log/messages) and lalso ook at how the drive is mounted ( /etc/mtab) . You can probably use a graphical editor like gedit to do this. But it will take more than point-and-click to find the problem. Look at the logs when the drive works they way you want and compare this to what happen when it doesn't.

Of course, someone who has already solved a similar problem might tell us the answer, but no volunteers have come forth so far.