External hard drive

onskjang · 10-21-2010, 07:48 PM

Hi,

I have WD external hdd (80GB) formatted with fat32.
I was using this hdd to transfer the data from computer A (LINUX, RH9) to computer B (Win7).

I was keep copying and deleting the data in the WD hdd during the data transfer because the amount to transfer is more than 300GB.

After doing this several times (and the WD drive was emptied), comp. A said the disk is full. I checked using 'df' and it was really full but 'ls -la' shows that there is no data in it.

I checked it in comp. B, and it showed empty. I tried to format in comp. A using 'mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/xxx# (block#)', but showed an error message like below.

'Warning: block count mismatch: found 78xxxxx but assuming 0'.

I found a similar situation in this forum metioning 'possible damaged linux kernel (not exactly same expression though)', so I re-installed linux in comp. A, but the problem was not solved.

I would like to know
1. why the disk info. is showed differently in linux and win7
2. why I cannot format it

Thanks.

GlennsPref · 10-21-2010, 08:18 PM

Quote:

Hi, Welcome to LQ!

LQ has a fantastic search function that may save you time waiting for an answer to a popular question.

With over 4 million posts to search it's possible the answer has been given.

Your linux file system works differently to M$, and may be caching your fs for that drive.

Not the data, just the addresses to the files that were there before.

Try updating the file system database, GNU/Linux has a program called locate (mlocate, slocate...)

When called it searches the database of files on the system.

Update your fs database with...

Code:

updatedb

I hope this helps.

Regards Glenn

ps. fsck may be required to release stale inodes. Look up man fsck.

onskjang · 10-21-2010, 10:37 PM

Thanks for the reply Glenn,

I tried 'updatedb', but didn't solve the issue.
After unmounting and removing the WD hdd, 'df' still displays the info about the hdd data. Is this also related to this issue?

darkstarbyte · 10-21-2010, 11:38 PM

I think I have an idea.

I would repartition it. I do this anytime my flash drive acts out.

Here is how I would do it.(note: if you want to do this the graphical way the whole time then click applications then go to administration then syntac package manager and type KPartition in the search thing.)(side note: Be careful not to partition the internal hard drive.)

Code:

sudo apt-get install kpartition

Then just open it, and it will ask for your password then you should be able to do this the graphical way instead of the terminal way.