[Shenlug] Unable to mount external hard drive

[Harvey Ussery]

Alvin Smith wrote:
> On 11/20/06, Harvey Ussery <huboxwood at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> I have an external hard drive recycled from a previous computer (iMac)
>> that died. I want to use it to back up my data, but I'm having trouble
>> mounting it.
>>
>> Here's the end of output of dmesg after turning on the hard drive:
>>
>> [17378480.308000] scsi6 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
>> [17378480.308000] usb-storage: device found at 14
>> [17378480.308000] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before 
>> scanning
>> [17378485.324000]   Vendor: Maxtor 4  Model: D080H4            Rev:  0 0
>> [17378485.324000]   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI
>> revision: 00
>> [17378485.336000] SCSI device sdb: 156301488 512-byte hdwr sectors
>> (80026 MB)
>> [17378485.336000] sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
>> [17378485.344000] SCSI device sdb: 156301488 512-byte hdwr sectors
>> (80026 MB)
>> [17378485.344000] sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
>> [17378485.344000]  sdb: sdb1 < >
>> [17378485.400000] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sdb
>> [17378485.400000] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
>> [17378485.400000] usb-storage: device scan complete
>> harvey at ubuntu:~$
>>
>> The "Maxtor" is clearly referring to the 80-gig external hard drive, and
>> it seems to be assigned to sdb. Yet fdisk can't read it:
>>
>> > harvey at ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
>> >
>> > Unable to read /dev/sdb
>> > harvey at ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb1
>> >
>> > Unable to read /dev/sdb1
>> > harvey at ubuntu:~$
>> Why can't fdisk read /sdb or /sdb1 when dmesg indicates that is the /dev
>> assigned to the Maxtor hard drive?
>>
>> Thanks for helping me figure this out.
>>
>> ~Harvey
>>
>
> What filesystem is on the HD?  You may need to format the drive as
> vfat, ext3, or reiser in order for you to read it.
>
> -- 
> Alvin
How do you query a device for its filesystem? As you can see from the 
above, I was unable to get fdisk to read /dev/sdb.

Anyway, I'm attempting to format a filesystem (ext3) on the external 
hard drive. So far it's not looking good:

harvey at ubuntu:~$ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb
mke2fs 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
/dev/sdb is entire device, not just one partition!
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
Warning: could not erase sector 2: Attempt to write block from 
filesystem resulted in short write
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
8732672 inodes, 17440534 blocks
872026 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
533 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
16384 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 
2654208,
        4096000, 7962624, 11239424

Warning: could not read block 0: Attempt to read block from filesystem 
resulted in short read
Warning: could not erase sector 0: Attempt to write block from 
filesystem resulted in short write
Writing inode tables: 181/533

I'm letting the process run, but it looks like it is stuck at this 
point. In some of my diagnostics earlier, I remember something about bad 
block or superblock on block 0. If there's a bad block, how do I fix it?

Thanks,

~Harvey