Problem formatting/mounting an OLD Iomega external hard drive.

akuthia · 03-05-2009, 01:33 PM

Ok, first i would like to preface this with the fact that the drive MAY be completely comprimised and not about to be formatted at all, at this point.

First, the drive itself, is a hitachi deskstar, iomega branded IDE-USB external drive 120 gb drive. I am having problems with this process both in my Ubuntu laptop, as well as my xp system. In xp, i go to format through the built in tools, it recognizes the drive as RAW, when i start the formatting process, it sits for a LONG time, and then the counter finally begins to move and it says its formatting, at which point, it gets to the end, and then says it cant format.

In Ubunutu, it's even worse. To start finding an answer, i found two threads here, http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...nal+hard+drive and http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...nal+hard+drive and replicated their terminal commands, results are at the end of the post. I also have a flash drive that i put in, and ran lsusb and mount with both of them plugged in, for comparison. based on those results,it would seems as if auto-detect is working correctly.

Running Gparted, it sees sda and sdc, but not sdb, which i beleive is supposed to be the iomega drive. Which i've confirmed by removing both and unmounting the flash first, and when i plugged the flash back in, without the hard drive, it became sdb.

Further, i confirmed that it was not a problem with the particular USB slot i was using, by using the flash drive again, in the slot, and it comes up without a problem.

Thank you for reading my long query, and many thanks to any and all assistance given.

for dmesg

Code:

[14505.911302] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : No Sense [current] 
[14505.911315] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: No additional sense information

gets repeated no other info was in there that i saw.

for mount w/ just the external hard drive:

Code:

/dev/sda1 on / type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
/proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
lrm on /lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=755)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/david/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=david)

For mount with flash drive as well:

Code:

/dev/sda1 on / type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
/proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
lrm on /lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=755)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/david/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=david)
/dev/sdc on /media/disk type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8,umask=077,flush)

for lsusb with just the EHD:

Code:

Bus 007 Device 004: ID 059b:0178 Iomega Corp. Hi-Speed USB-to-IDE Bridge Controller
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 064e:a101 Suyin Corp. 
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

With both the drive and flash drive (truncated ending w/o devices)

Code:

Bus 007 Device 005: ID 058f:6387 Alcor Micro Corp. Transcend JetFlash Flash Drive
Bus 007 Device 004: ID 059b:0178 Iomega Corp. Hi-Speed USB-to-IDE Bridge Controller
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 064e:a101 Suyin Corp.

kilgoretrout · 03-05-2009, 03:39 PM

Attach the drive, let it spin up, open a console and run:

$ sudo fdisk -l

and post the output here. The above will list all drives that your system recognizes, whether mounted, formatted, etc., or not.

akuthia · 03-05-2009, 03:52 PM

doesnt look like it's recognized, hmm, i wonder why it would atleast be seen by windows...

Edit: Er, wait, sda 2 and 5 look like they add up to the 120 gb that the drive is supposed to be, right? <runs off and unplugs it and does fdisk again>

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00057f13

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       38161   306528201   83  Linux
/dev/sda2           38162       38913     6040440    5  Extended
/dev/sda5           38162       38913     6040408+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

akuthia · 03-05-2009, 03:59 PM

nope, looks like they're just extended partitions of the internal hard drive...... forgot thats how linux does it...

okos · 03-05-2009, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by akuthia

doesnt look like it's recognized, hmm, i wonder why it would atleast be seen by windows...

Edit: Er, wait, sda 2 and 5 look like they add up to the 120 gb that the drive is supposed to be, right? <runs off and unplugs it and does fdisk again>

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00057f13

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       38161   306528201   83  Linux
/dev/sda2           38162       38913     6040440    5  Extended
/dev/sda5           38162       38913     6040408+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

sda1 - sda5 are all on one 320 gb hdd as stated, "Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB"

Your second drive is not showing up. It is probably fried.

Otherwise you would see something similar to this with two drives.

Code:

Disk /dev/hdc: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x02670266

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdc1   *           1        5840    46909768+  83  Linux
/dev/hdc2            5841        5948      867510   82  Linux swap
/dev/hdc3            5949        7296    10827810   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00073443

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1       11917    95723271    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2           11918       37413   204796620   83  Linux
/dev/sda3           37414      108636   572098747+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5           37414       62909   204796588+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda6           62910       75804   103579056    b  W95 FAT32

akuthia · 03-05-2009, 04:52 PM

does it not seem odd that the drive itself is atleast visible in the windows manager? one last effort im going to make, if i can work the cables around is to try to get the drive hooked into my desktop (while keeping it half in the enclousure because the power cable is a pain to get on and off of it, and see if it is recognized by the bios

Edit: lovely, so much for THAT idea, now my desktop doesnt want to start. oh well, its not a linux system, so it's problems dont belong here...

kilgoretrout · 03-05-2009, 07:03 PM

The most common things to go on external hard drive enclosures is the hard drive followed by the power supply. I had one that was only giving 10v on the 12v line. Sometimes it would spin up the drive, most times not and sometimes it would seem to half way get there and report weird drive characteristics in windows. If it's the power supply, removing the hard drive and installing in your desktop would allow you to at leat use the drive for something.