[wplug] Linux Compatible External Drives

[Diana A Clarion]

On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 14:47 -0500, Tom Rhodes wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Feb 2008 14:41:52 -0500
> "Mackenzie Morgan" <macoafi at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Most drives are FAT32-formatted, aren't they?  FAT32 is compatible with just
> > about everything.
> > 
> > On Feb 5, 2008 2:37 PM, beer at cmu.edu <beer at cmu.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > > Hey kids, hope everyone is well.
> > >
> > > I was wondering if anyone knows of any good external drives that support
> > > linux out of the box?
> > >
> > > I need something that is 500G, and preferably supports both usb and
> > > firewire, but I can do without the firewire.  If it had a usuable encryption
> > > option that would also be swell.
> > >
> > > I've done some searches and I find drives that OS X and Solaris compatible
> > > out of the box but none yet that support linux.
> > >
> > > I know I can just reformat the drive and all, but given the magnitude of
> > > the work I need this for, I want to have to do as little as possible to the
> > > drives before I can use them.
> 
> [Context lost due to top posting]
> 
> Even better, how about a USB enclosure - they're usually
> pretty generic, and some may even suppor firewire.
> 
I was just about to suggest that.  My partner just built a 500 Gb eSATA
backup rig around an enclosure with a JMicron JM20336 chip and a Western
Digital drive.  Granted, she's using it under WinBlows (I've been after
her for a year and a half to dual-boot Ubuntu, to no avail), but Gentoo
claims that the chip is supported.

A weekend project, maybe?