I just purchased a Lacie Rugged Mini 2TB external drive assuming that I would be able to use it on Linux because I've never had problems with external drives before. When I plug it in, it mounts as a directory with the name "Lacie Setup", which contains .exe files, some other stuff, and a Readme.txt file that states only "Before using your drive, LaCie Setup software must be launched." Will I be able to use this drive from my Ubuntu 16.04 machine at all?
If so, what setup is required?
Internet search isn't turning up a lot of information on this, but this thread has me nervous: , specifically, this quote:
"[just deleting all the partitions and formatting it with Partition Editor on Linux is a] good suggestion, but I have looked it up already. People on AskUbuntu say once they do that to their Lacie drives (any model), it kills the drive completely, the software is necessary for the drive to run and the software I use, MKUSB kills drives usually."
24 Answers
Based on reassurance from @heynnema, I went ahead and used the Ubuntu disk utility Disks to delete the "LaCie Setup" partition and add a new Ext4 partition, and things seem to be working fine now.
(At the moment I still have an MBR partition table, not GPT.)
from the comments: I can't think of any reason that you shouldn't be able to use it... but I don't have any specific Lacie experience. And now's the time to try it, and if it doesn't work, return it. Keep a copy of the Windows utilities before you wipe it. They usually include a backup program, and maybe a SMART utility.
Use a GPT partition table, because it's a 2TB drive.
edit: MBR partition table disks can only have 4 partitions, and typically are used with older BIOS computers with small hard disks. GPT partition table disks can have 128 (I don't remember the max) partitions, and typically are used with newer UEFI computers with large hard disks.
I bought external Lacie Disk 1 TB today and dealt with problems on Linux as follows:
- formatted disk (and removed setup files of course)
- deleted partition (it has about 400 MB size - rest of the disk were not allocated)
- created new partition (NTFS) of size 1TB
- mounted partition, which I just created
Steps from 2 to 4 were done with default "Disks" program available in the system and everything worked like a charm. I have Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
Cheers!
Just acquired a 5 TB LaCie hard drive. I did a backup of the files that came with it, then deleted the existing partition (500mb), and tried to create a full 5TB partition NTFS/ext4 using the Ubuntu 17.10 disk utility, but this did not work. So I just plugged the HD in a Windows computer that still had the original software that came with the HD, and set up the hard drive as a single partition, and it worked perfectly. Ubuntu detects the hard drive successfully, but it does not detect the file system.
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