On Sun, Oct 30, 2016 at 4:15 PM, Gregory P. Ennis <PoMec@pomec.net> wrote:
Everyone,

I just purchased 3 WD My Passport Ultra 3T usb drives that I had hoped
to use for archive files for some digital images.

Looks like WD has made it difficult to use for Linux.  The google
searches that I did stepped me through mounting it on a Windows 10
system and then formatting it with nts.  Unfortuantely, when I tried to
connect it to Fedora 24 I am still not able to recognize it to mount
it.  All of the /dev/sd* entries were the same before and after I
plugged it in.  Smartmontools appears to recognize it when it is
plugged in a usb port, but pauses and does not finish its execution to
completion.  gparted scans all devices and does not finish when the
drive is plugged in a usb port.

Has anyone in the group figured out how to use these drives?

Thanks for you help!!!!

Greg Ennis

What clues have dmesg given?

dmesg | tail

or to watch live while you plug it in:

watch 'dmesg | tail'

Just looked up the drive so I note it does not have network capability, looks like a choice of hdmi and usb.  Is this correct?

Also, wondering if formatting to FAT16 on your windows system would give you a foot hold on the drive the letting linux format to fs of choice; caveat, I have no Windows systems so Linux file system is a good option for me.  According to my limited research the drive is usually just being plugged in and is detected hence the dmesg info request.  "lsusb" may reveal something and perhaps ntfs-3g.probe but I am grasping at this point.

-- Fred