[Bglug] External USB Hard drive and Ubuntu

[PJR Consulting]

Hi all:
Last week I purchased a 1 TB external usb hard drive at Walmart - $118 - 
the black one. It comes with a power brick and a usb cable (square on 
the drive end, standard rectangle on the computer end). I thought it 
would be a good additional safety feature for my server's 300 GB raid 
array; with Ubuntu 8.04LTS.
I plugged it in - power first, then computer - and an icon soon appeared 
on the desktop named "Elements". Apparently this is the name Western 
Digital, sorry, WDC, gives to it. But it had a padlock symbol on it and 
I could neither write to it nor read from it. Fdisk did not see it. 
Lsusb showed the device was there. Properties showed it to be an msdos 
file system. Hmph! I tried removing and plugging it in several times and 
powering it off while unplugged also. No change. I logged out and back 
in as root and tried from there. Same results, no write. I powered down 
the computer and logged in as root, no change.
Some Googling found others had the same problem with this device and 
Ubuntu. Rats.
I still had the purchase slip and the packaging, so I took it back to 
Walmart. Other than confirming it was all there in the package, they 
refunded my money, no questions asked.
"For your information", as a colleague used to say
Peter Richards.