This may not be specifically a Linux problem, but some one here may be able to help anyway.

I have an Asus 901 net book running Xandros with a 20gig hard drive. Today a bought a 320Gig Seagate Free Agent external hard drive with the idea of using it for all may PCs, two being XP and my Asus. I plugged it into my XP laptop and I was a bit surprised to find it had some management software on it. This seemed to include setting regular backup schedules and the like. I did this. Now when I plug it into my Asus Linux machine it does not even recognize it. I immediately thought it was another Linux issue. However I then tried it on my older XP PC and that doesn't recognize it either!

Any ideas what the problem might be? Are these things set only to work with one PC or do I need a newer version of XP and does Linux just not work with these things? It seems very strange to me.

When you say it is not recognized is that because Linux does not auto mount the hard drive?

Try typing 'fdisk -l' or 'sudo fdisk -l' if on Ubuntu or similar, in a terminal.

It could very well be that the disk it formatted with NTFS and your Linux box does not have the right modules installed to read that file system.

Thanks for the help.

However tonight I tried the drive for a second time on my Linux and other XP machine and it worked fine on both. I have no idea why.

I have no idea why.

Spin up times and ready on the Free Agent drives can sometimes be quite long. I have a smaller capacity one and it is not always recognized at first or takes a long time to do so. Unplugging it from the USB and back in it will finally be ok.

Check ya BIOS

BR>Jack