External Hard Drive?

Forgive me for what likely a dumb question. I would like to get an external hard drive for my AAO. Most of the ones i looked at say they are windows and mac compatible, nothing about Linux. Will they work with a linux AAO? Will I need any extra software. Thanks..

 

Any USB drives, with the exception of newer Seagate Freeagent drives:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/07/seagate-freeagent-drives-not-down-with-linux/

will work with Linux out of the box.

 

Some drives now come formatted NTFS rather than FAT, so you may need to install the ntfs-3g package to enable NTFS support.

 

Hi,
how can i install the ntfs-3g package? Up to now i have no internet-access with the acer aspire one (it does not perceive the "scientific-atlanta webstar" modem as a connection to the internet), so i have to use another computer to ask you whether i'll find the package with the "update manager"?
Thanks in advance for your help ad I'm sorry for my bad english - I'm from germany and have not so any opportunities to exercise your language...

 

The easiest way to install it would be if you have internet access then you can install if by opening a terminal (you can do this from the menu of the file manager) then type in "sudo yum install ntfs-3g".

Alternatively, you can download the rpm from here, and you should be able to install it with the package manager just by double clicking it, but it may have dependencies you need to install first (I can't remember if it needed anything when I installed it).

Does your modem connect by ethernet or usb? If it uses ethernet it should just work when connected, however some cable internet providers require you register your computer's ethernet MAC address with them before they'll allow you to connect, although you can fake the MAC address your computer sends if you need to.