I have a My Book External Hard Drive made by Western Digital and it came from the factory formatted in HFS+ I want to use the external hard drive with my Linux Operating System computers (IBM laptops, Blades, Dell, etc...) as the Ultimate Goal. I have Windows computers as well and I'm currently using the windows Operating System to change the format of the My Book drive. Using the Linux OS computers to mount to the My Book has been impossible because the software that came with the My Book drive has "setup.exe" files in the format that cannot be read by the Linux OS. So I'm not sure if the Linux Computer can't use the hard drive because the File-System HFS+ on the external drive is the reason. So, the external drive has to be re-formatted into FAT32, or should it be re-formatted in NTFS because that is also as easy an option for the Windows computer to perform to the external My Book hard drive.

But, the reason I'm not going to format the drive into NTFS is because the last time I did that I still couldn't read the drive on any of the Linux computers I had at my disposal. I sent the My Book external drive back to the factory and told them I wanted my warranty to cover changing the File-System from the NTFS it was changed from the factory File-System HFS+. It took 3 weeks for the order to get back to me. I still can't mount to any ports I have through the USB connection from the computer to the External hard drive. Linux can't install the software from the CD.

The CD with the software installs on any Windows computer and Mac computer. Since the File-System is HFS+ on the External Drive the Mac can use the External hard drive without any problems. But the Mac is only a temporary computer that can be used to help make the Linux computers work with the My Book drive. I need the External Drive to work with the Linux computer without using the ".exe" setup files on the CD because of the incompatabilty of the software. Can I avoid useing the CD software to Install?

This is for systems with Linux Red Hat 4 Workstation ES only

The my Book Instructions say that the CD that uses a .exe file system. Must be ran on each system that is suppose to use the my Book. But the Linux OS can't run or use the .exe file extention. This is the main problem. But I thought if I changed the File system on the my Book Hard Drive I could get Linux to work without using the CD to run the drivers for the My Book.