Need help with 1 tb mass storage device with linux

[Dave Germiquet]

Hi, Fellow Tlugers

I need a large external hard disk for back up and its proofing a
little tricky that it need to be. The hard disk will be attached to a
system running Red Hat 5.2. I have already bought two and not having
any lack.

I currently have a LANTEC  NexStar.CX  - that is all the labelling it
has, and a 1TB hard disk inside. When I plug it in to the USB port and
power on the drive, the hard disk come up - can tell that from the
sound and LED lighting up, but there is no activity on the host. What
I mean by this is, I can not see a new entry under dev directory, the
dmesg is silent. In all way, its as if nothing was attached.

I have counter checked by plugging in a flash disk and it get mounted
immediately, so the problem is not on the host side. It must be
something to do with the external drive. Now, is there anything I can
do to force the operating system to be aware of it?

If there is nothing I can do about the above, does any once have
experience with a 1 TB external drive that works reliably under Linux?
I am fine with both USB2 or IEEE 1394b. Ideally, the hard disk should
be doing 7200 rpm, but would still pick up a 5400 rpm if it work well
with Linux. Any assistance would be highly appreaciated

Regards,

Dave
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