[GLLUG] Trouble Accessing external UDB hard drives from Western Digital

[dburk at ws6transam.org]

Good Morning,
First post to the list.

I'm Dan, a relatively new Linux user who is trying to help out the MSU
seismic department. I bumped into the project (of all things) because of a
craigslist ad for a log I was trying to get rid of, and they found out
that I was an ex-USAF seismic analyst! Well I got the time at the moment,
and used to really enjoy working with seismic data, and so far it's been
pretty fun to help out the college with this project. They even taped a
little sign up on the door and made me the official "NERSP engineer",
which sounds a lot like NERD, or nurse...but hey.

I'm trying to create a useful, researchable subsurface data collection
that is comprised of seismic data from Northeastern Russia located on
about 1500 CDROMs. The data needs to be converted from a Windows-based
Russian seismic format into a standardized format called "SAC". The first
thing I'm doing is indexing the whole collection, then getting it off the
CDROMS and into a directory structure. Each disc contains about 4000
files, so we're talking about six million+ files that will need to be
converted. The standard data format is based on the Linux platform, which
is good, I think. I need to work on an automated conversion routine that
takes the data, validates the timing (and corrects if necessary), then
splits each file into four SAC files which represent the various
seismometers from the dataset. I figure the process will require a mixture
of Bourne shell scripting, PERL, and C code.

I've got a book coming on PERL scripting (which I've never done before)
and I'm going to have to brush up on my C coding, which I haven't done in
like, fifteen years.

I'm using OpenSUSE version 11.4 with KBE on my home machine (which is
supposed to be a mirror of the university computer), and at the
university, I run OpenSUSE version 11.2 with GNOME.

I need to get this data off the CD-ROMs and onto a couple of hard drives.
So yesterday I had delivered two drives: An internal SATA 2 Tb drive, and
an external 3TB USB 2/USB3 drive from Western Digital that I'll use for
offsite backup. Now, I've plugged in USB flash drives into this computer
with no problems, and I've even used a USB external drive (300 GB)
successfuly, and they have auto-mounted. However this new WD drive doesn't
mount properly. It's coming up in Linux as /dev/sdb and /dev/sdb1 when I
look at it in YAST / Partitioner, but the os isn't identifying the format
as NTFS. At this point I am feeling rather confused with the whole thing.
I have NOT yet tried to plug in the 2 TB internal drive as I don't have
the SATA cable... The university forgot to order that part and I'll have
to pick one up at Digilink. I am hoping that I don't have a similar
auto-mounting problem with this drive.

I've checked over the OpenSUSE user forums, and have not seen any similar
problems or solutions. I thought maybe I'd check into the local group
here, say hello, and seeing as I'm jumping into this Linux with both feet,
figure I might as well get involved a bit. Is there anyone local here in
the Lansing area that can help me figure out how to access this drive? I'm
going to need this storage space pretty soon, as I am halfway through
indexing the CDROMS, and will soon want to start moving the data.

Thanks,
-Dan Burk
Haslett, MI
517-388-2875