The usb hard-drive (has one fat32 partition) was recognized properly in Linux last time and so is in windoseXP, I also did chkdsk with auto-fix bad sectors enabled and returned no errors. but now in Linux:

(~) % dmesg |tail
[ 25.125169] scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[ 25.135685] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[ 25.135695] USB Mass Storage support registered.
[ 25.136157] usb-storage: device found at 3
[ 25.136161] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[ 30.137407] usb-storage: device scan complete
[ 30.138742] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access USB TO I DE/SATA Device 0009 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[ 30.142406] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[ 30.151039] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk
[ 134.861724] FAT: unable to read boot sector

(~) % sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdc /mnt/external
mount: /dev/sdc: can't read superblock

(~) % fsck.vfat /dev/sdc
dosfsck 3.0.3, 18 May 2009, FAT32, LFN
Got 0 bytes instead of 512 at 0

(~) % sudo badblocks /dev/sdc
badblocks: invalid starting block (0): must be less than 0

(~) % fdisk -l /dev/sdc prints nothing

Testdisk utility will also not list the partition at all. Please note that in /dev there is only /dev/sdc no sdc1 or anything. Anyway to mount the partition without formatting it and losing the data? Can I somehow use dd or mkfs.vfat, affecting only the superblock? In the end I will burn them to dvd in windoze, what can I do?

I don't think it recognized it. Look at this one


See this 'sdb: sdb1' line? That's where it recognizes a partition. Only then can I mount sdb1. Try plugging it in, let it settle and run

dmesg |tail -n 30

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ah, indeed, you are right, it only recognized the device (sdc), not the partition, which would have been sdc1.

(edit: or so I thought! With my oggplayer,
dmesg | tail
[15239.498733] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[15239.500783] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] 7683072 512-byte logical blocks: (3.93 GB/3.66 GiB)
[15239.501659] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[15239.501670] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 04 00 00 00
[15239.501675] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[15239.510848] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[15239.510865] sdc:

So a partition can also be just sdx when there is only one partition in a device.
I'll have a look at this article when I have time. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8366

thanks a lot!

now for some reason, there is nothing in dmesg. I plug the device in and nothing happens. I have no idea what changed since then. I have hotplug and sd_mod built in the kernel and there are noumerous CONFIG_SCSI =m =y in /boot/config-2.6.31-9-rt whereas my oggplayer is recognised fine with just a "locale utf8 case sensitive filesystem" warning that doesn't seem to be a problem. But the oggplayer isn't recognized in other ubuntu and windoze (only the folders are displayed, not contents). I keep on the problems.

Yes, a partition can be the whole usb drive. AFAIK only windows does that.
sdc:
I would read that line this way - that there may be an sdc partition, or there may be sdc with no partitions.

Can you access it?

I can access my oggplayer, but my usb-drive not yet. However, in my old puppy linux pc, the usb-drive is mounted apart from sometimes when the device appears in dmesg, but the node /dev/sd* isn't created. In that case, I reconnect the device and it is mounted. The relevant(?) modules loaded in puppy pc are usbhid usb-storage uhci-hcd and usbcore. In my main pc, running puredyne (a multimedia production distro based on xubuntu9.10) the modules loaded are fat, vfat, usbhid, usb-storage, whereas usbcore, sd_mod, hotplug and uhci_hcd are built in the kernel (2.6.31-9) and it keeps not appearing in dmesg (of course the cable is connected and the dev lit). It should be a matter of modules, don't you think so? Update, by modprobing nls_iso558859-1 and nls_utf8 (maybe not needed) the device appears in dmesg and I am back where I started... I plan to check which modules are loaded in puppy pc, nls and usb relevant and probe them at puredyne.

Try it somewhere else, or try another drive in your box. I had puredyne here somewhwere but it didn't have a usb problem that I remember.

The difference with the old puppy linux pc is that it "finds" the usb drive with uhci_hcd (usb 1.0) loaded as module, (not built in kernel), whereas in the puredyne pc it's with ehci_hcd (usb2.0). I booted from puppy live cd in the puredyne pc and still the device isn't detected. Both modules uhci-hcd and ehci-hcd were loaded. I rmmmod ehci-hcd and reconnected device, still didn' t help. Anyway...

put this line into a file /etc/modprobe.d/usb.conf

install uhci-hdc /sbin/modprobe ehci-hcd; /sbin/modprobe uhci-hcd

THEN try it