WD PiDrive on Pi 3

[rangioran]

I've recently received my PiDrive case and cable - so I decided to get the WD 314G PiDrive up ans running.

All went well but I didn't elect to write a new SD card with berryboot but just use the HD as file and data storage - that's when I hit a problem.

Although I can 'see' the drive using file manager (I have a Pi 3 running raspbian) it appears as 'media/pi/WD_PiDrive_314GB', and when Attempt to create a folder on it I get an error box with a no entry sign saying "Error creating directory: Permission denied".

I checked the properties for the drive and the owner is root, group is root and the Access Controls are View and Access - anyone, Change Content is only owner. I tried changing this to anyone (Do you want to recursively apply these changes to all files and sub-folders?) answered Yes, but still no go.

Do I need to be logged in some special way as perhaps Root?

[dukla2000]

Do I need to be logged in some special way as perhaps Root?

You do need root permission. The way I do this (assuming you have some kind of x desktop) is, in a terminal, type
sudo pcmanfm
Then navigate to the directory and set permissions for everyone. A bit clunky but it works for me, I am no expert.

[rangioran]

Hi Dukla2000,

Thanks for the suggestion.

Tried it and got the following result...
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo pcmanfm
** Message: x-terminal-emulator has very limited support, consider choose another terminal

** (pcmanfm:950): WARNING **: The directory '~/Templates' doesn't exist, ignoring it
:1: parser error : Document is empty
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
^

(soffice:1027): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to store changes into `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: Failed to create file '/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel.RGF2FY': No such file or directory

(soffice:1027): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to set the permissions of `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: No such file or directory

(soffice:1027): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to store changes into `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: Failed to create file '/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel.JQ57FY': No such file or directory

(soffice:1027): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to set the permissions of `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: No such file or directory
:1: parser error : Document is empty
[General]
^

(soffice:1092): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to store changes into `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: Failed to create file '/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel.5ERYFY': No such file or directory

(soffice:1092): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to set the permissions of `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: No such file or directory

(soffice:1092): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to store changes into `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: Failed to create file '/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel.CET3FY': No such file or directory

(soffice:1092): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to set the permissions of `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: No such file or directory
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Struggling to understand why, if this device is aimed squarely at the Raspberry Pi - which all of the myriad of press reports confirm - it's so difficult to get going?

[Aydan]

This has nothing to do with the WD pi drive. Any other USB drive would behave exactly like this.
What happened is that thew drive got mounted with root permission, so root is the owner of the mount point.
How did you mount the drive? What filesystem is on it?

Regards
Aydan

[rangioran]

Hi Aydan,

I simply connected it using the WD supplied cable, set the config.txt to high power USB and ran up the Pi. Didn't appreciate that I'd need to mount it. I'd running Raspbian latest version.

So, do I need to remove and re-install correctly?

Just wasn't too sure that I wanted the WD suggested BerryBoot system so was planning to use it simply as a second disk for data storage.

[rangioran]

Can anyone suggest what to do here please?

[darkbibble]

you need to partition it and format it for it to work properly.
for that you need gparted, type "sudo gparted" at terminal. then select the hdd in gparted and then umount it and then you can create partitions and then format them

[dukla2000]

A shame pcmanfm wont run. Do you have a root or superuser file manager option in your menu?

The command line version would probably be simpler if there was a lnux guru here, something like
sudo chmod (some options) /media/pi/WD_PiDrive_314GB

but I am too useless at linux to know what (some options) needs to be!

[rangioran]

Thanks darkbibble (and dukla2000),

gparted did the trick perfectly - much appreciate the guidance.

Eric