Seagate FreeAgent Desktop USB Drives on Ubuntu 7.10

A few weeks ago, I've bought an external USB drive. I chose a Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 500Gb, even though I knew it would not work 100% smoothly in Ubuntu. Anyway, I've read around about the problems it might give in linux and I was well prepared to solve them. Unfortunately the only problem I encountered after I bought it, was different from anything I've read on the various forums I browsed before buying.

Basically, the disk automounted only the first time I plugged it in my PC. From that moment on, when I plug it in, the front led would blink for some time, but nothing else would happen. I tried to unplug both the USB cable and the power cable, which seemed to work for some people, but it wouldn't solve my problem.

So, I had to solve in some other way.

I've found this "workaround" online, but I can't find the link anymore. Anyway here is what I did, for those people who might be interested:

STEP 1:
Open a terminal and give the following command:

sudo vol_id /dev/sd##

Where "##" is the partition of the FreeAgent drive (letter and number change from system to system, you just have to guess yours if you don't already know it. Mine, for example, is "d1", making the command "sudo vol_id /dev/sdd1").
This command will report a few info about your disk. Copy the UUID code of the disk/partition, it's a long series of numbers (and sometimes letters)

STEP 2:
Edit /etc/fstab and add the following line:

UUID=longnumber /media/MOUNTPOINT FILESYSTEM user,defaults 0 0

where:
longnumber is the uuid code of the partition you obtained in Step 1
MOUNTPOINT is the directory where you want the disk to be mounted (create the directory if you don't already have it: "sudo mkdir /media/MOUNTPOINT")
FILESYSTEM is the filesystem present on the drive (ntfs? ext3? vfat?)
user should let you mount the Freeagent hard disk without root permissions (but it did not work for me, see below)

STEP 3:
Create a script to mount/unmount your drive (change parameters where necessary).
Save it (I called it 'freeagent'), make it executable and copy/move it somewhere in your path (for example /usr/local/bin)

#!/bin/bash

if `mount grep -q /media/MOUNTPOINT`
then umount /media/MOUNTPOINT
else mount /media/MOUNTPOINT
fi

You then plug the USB drive, wait until its led stops blinking and then launch the script from a terminal (you can also create a shortcut on your desktop for ease of use, if you want).
It works this way: it checks whether the disk is mounted. If it is, it unmounts it. If it's not, it mounts it.
As I said in Step 2, the user option we wrote in the fstab should mount the disk without the need for root permissions, but it did not work for me. I had to edit the script and add "sudo" before 'umount' and 'mount' to make it work:

#!/bin/bash
if `mount grep -q /media/MOUNTPOINT`
then sudo umount /media/MOUNTPOINT
else sudo mount /media/MOUNTPOINT
fi

If you are making it a desktop shortcut to be launched by clicking on it, change sudo with the "graphical" command needed by your desktop environment (for example: "gksu" if using Gnome or "kdesudo" if using KDE).

Here it is!

Ok, I needed a couple of days to make myself accustomed to the laptop and to try and understand a few things.
First impressions:

• it's light (although heavier than I thought I'd feel, and heavier than what FSC declares: 1.9kg instead of 1.7),
  
• the display is good. I thought that a resolution of 1280x800 on a 12.1" screen would make everything soooo small, but it's actually perfectly usable.
• the keyboard is ok. I'm not used to type on laptops' keyboards, but the feel is good. The only two drawbacks I could find so far are that the arrow keys are smaller than the other keys, and that there is no PgUp/PgDown/"Begin"/End keys. I mean, there are, but you have to press two keys (Fn key + an arrow) to use these functions.
• Construction is good. The laptop looks well built, and there are no strange noises when one picks it up. Maybe it's because it's brand new. Anyway this was something I was worried about because before buying it I read all the reviews I could find, and a few pointed out that the materials the SI1520 is built of are not so good. Of course it's mainly plastic, but not so cheap as those reviews said.
• The touchpad looks good. It has a nice feel and works well. The rightmost part of it works as a scroller, and influences the vertical scrollbar of your browser (or any other window that shows one). Nice touch.
• Now on to the worse part. Of course this is a personal opinion! The hard drive (120Gb unformatted, 111Gb formatted) is divided in three partitions:

1. A 12Gb hidden partition, used as "recovery" partition
2. A 79Gb partition, on which Windows Vista Home Premium resides
3. A 20Gb partition, for "Data"

I found it was stupid to waste 12 Gb (more than 10% of the entire disk) for a recovery partition that would probably never be used. I mean, recovery might be needed one day or the other, but that can be easily done with the Recovery DVD found in the box. I was worried that the recovery DVD was just a "boot disk" that would recovery the installation by copying data from the hidden partition to Vista's one. But after a few experiments, I've found out that this DVD is an OEM version of the setup DVD for Windows Vista, so one can use it to install Vista from scratch.

Therefore I erased all the partitions and made them from zero. My hard drive is now divided into two partitions: a 37Gb partition for Windows Vista, and a 74Gb partition for Linux.
Reinstalling Vista took around half an hour, and all went smoothly. Only the built-in memory card reader wouldn't be recognized by the installation, but the Drivers Cd included in the package solved the problem easily.
I then proceeded to installing Linux. I chose the Kubuntu distribution, because I already am an Ubuntu user, and because this distribution works great with this laptop.
But I will get into the details of the Kubuntu installation in a future post.