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(Solved) Seagate OneTouch Hub compatability with Linux? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I am contemplating buying one of the Seagate OneTouch Hub external hard drives as a backup for my media that's currently stored on some other external hard drives connected to my home server since they are always spinning.

My local retailers don't give me many options as far as large storage storage solution goes, and the only other viable option now is a WD My BOOK 14 TB.

However, the retailer I will be buying it from goes out of its way to state that Windows or macOS is required. Is there any reason I should believe that I will run into troubles under Linux? I've had no issues whatsoever with some other Seagate hard drives (Expansion 5 TB), which I just instantly reformat to ext4 and use as normal. My guess is that this is just for the included software? I just want to make sure before I order.

(More long term I will set up a NAS, but for now time to learn and configure is more scarce than money, so I just want a solution that will prevent me from losing my data)

EDIT: For anyone coming to this later wondering the same thing, I can confirm that it works just fine. It is just the included backup software that is not compatible. I've formatted it to ext4 and currently using rsync to backup my media.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't know about the hub specifically, but I have a One Touch portable external HDD that touts some of the same features. I've never had any particular problems with it - it's just a normal USB mass storage device. The "special features" provided by the Seagate Toolkit (not available on Linux) seem like they're done at the filesystem level.

If you don't care about encryption, it will most likely just work - format it however you like. If you care about encryption, there's ways like LUKS or filesystems with FS-level support, depending on how much you care about interoperability with non-Linux systems. You might also be able to do something kooky like format it with Bitlocker on Windows, which I think can still be mounted on a Linux system; I was able to access my encrypted Windows partition from my Linux install on my Surface if I entered the key - I'm sure there's a way to automate that part.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Thanks, I keep gaining confidence that this should work just fine for my use case. I don't care about encryption for this, it will mainly serve as backup for my media collection, and anything I would want encrypted, I could always encrypt myself first.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Rather than play the "will this product work on Linux" game I bought an enclosure and made my own. I got an Orico enclosure and put a large HDD into it.

Most enclosures are OS agnostic (but check anyway) and you can put quite large drives in them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Interesting! I will look more into this. Thanks for the tip

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I have one and it works as a drive but all the seagate software doesn’t run in Linux.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Ok, perfect! I am not interested in the software :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I dunno if the Hub software works but I do have a Seagate OneTouch portable 4TB drive and it worked without issues on Linux after reformatting like I would any other drive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Ok, great, thanks :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Maybe?

It depends on if the added functions are software-based, or if there's some hardware funkery going on.

Given it's a consumer product, I'd wager it's just a drive in an enclosure that does all their mirroring/backups/encryption stuff in software, but their marketing material doesn't seem to say one way or the other.

Google indicates older versions can be reformatted, so I'd bet that's still true.

If I'm wrong it's not my fault, etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, that's what I am hoping for. Thanks :)