WD External Disc Drive

[Derek Funk]

Rob Hurle wrote:
> Dear All,
>
>   This may sound like a Windows problem, but please read on.  I made a
> mistake and bought a WD "My Passport" external 350GB disc drive for
> use on several Windows machines, on some of which I don't have admin
> access, and a couple of FreeBSD systems.
>
>   On first use on Windows the disc shows up only as a virtual CD (I
> assume this is the firmware), "unlock.exe" has to be run and the
> software installed (admin privileges necessary).  Once it's unlocked
> and the software installed, the big disc appears, the software can be
> uninstalled, and the big disc reformatted as NTFS.  From then on, the
> virtual CD can be ignored and the big disc used on any Windows system.
>
>   Now to FreeBSD.  The newly formatted (as NTFS) disc appears as two
> devices - /dev/cd0 (never seen this before) and /dev/da0s1 (the normal
> USB disc drive device).  They can be mounted as follows:
>
> freebsd [10:45] ~#mount_udf /dev/cd0 /mnt
> freebsd [10:45] ~#mount /usb0
>
> (/etc/fstab describes the NTFS file system type, and the virtual CD is
> a UDF file system).  We now have:
>
> freebsd [10:46] ~#df
> Filesystem     1K-blocks        Used           Avail  Capacity  Mounted on
> /dev/cd0            582962    582962                 0   100%    /mnt
> /dev/da0s1  311877845  2332729 309545116       1%    /usb0
>
> If we look at each device, the virtual CD has the WD software, as expected:
>
> freebsd [10:45] ~#ll /mnt
> total 6300
> drwxr-xr-x   3 501  staff         2048 12 Sep  05:32  Extras
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 501  staff   3680544  5 Sep   08:20  Unlock.exe
> drwxrwxrwx  5 501  staff        2048  5 Sep   08:30  User Manuals
> drwxr-xr-x    3 501  staff        2048 12 Sep  05:28  WD SmartWare
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 501  staff   2770208  5 Sep   08:20  WD SmartWare.exe
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 501  staff           695 19 Jun    03:06  What is this.html
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 501  staff             88 19 Jun    07:12  autorun.inf
>
> No problem.  Now for the FreeBSD problem.  If we look at what's on the
> big disc (newly formatted as NTFS on a Windows system):
>
> freebsd [10:45] ~#ll /usb0
> total 75200
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel           2560 23 Apr  2009 $AttrDef
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel                 0 25 Oct 14:37 $BadClus
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel     9746184 23 Apr  2009 $Bitmap
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel           8192 25 Oct 14:37 $Boot
> drwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel                0 25 Oct 14:37 $Extend
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel   67108864 25 Oct 14:37 $LogFile
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel           4096 25 Oct 14:37 $MFTMirr
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel                 0 23 Apr  2009 $Secure
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel       131072 23 Apr  2009 $UpCase
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel                 0 25 Oct 14:37 $Volume
> drwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel                0 25 Oct 15:54 MyStuff
> drwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel                0 25 Oct 16:23 RECYCLER
> drwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel                0 25 Oct 14:37 System Volume
> Information
>
> The only thing that shows up in Windows is the "MyStuff" directory,
> which I put there.  I can copy anything from "MyStuff" to anywhere
> else on the FreeBSD system, no worries.  But if I attempt to copy a
> new file into the "MyStuff" directory, I get the following:
>
> freebsd [10:46] ~#cp ~/tmp/test /usb0/MyStuff
> cp: /usb0/MyStuff/test: No such file or directory
> freebsd [11:08] ~#
>
> What on earth is going on?  Why do I get the message that "test" does
> not exist, on the directory that I'm copying to?  I can copy nothing
> to this big disc from FreeBSD, but can copy from it OK.  Why are those
> other files there?  Are they part of the standard Windows NTFS
> formatting?  Can I use newfs(8) to make an NTFS file system on the big
> disc?  Any pointers to a solution would be most welcome.  I'm also
> trying to ask similar questions on the WD lists.  Thanks for any help.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob Hurle
>   
I would use a tool like gparted and FAT32 the drive... It may run a bit 
slower but both systems can read and write to it.