FAT32 hd failure -plugged usb device

Jose Rivas · 04-03-2008, 12:36 PM

Well, this a Maxtor IDE HD 30GB FAT32 what crasher under Win98SE. BIOS can see the hd but Windows don't (including winxp).
I have a USB-to-IDE adaptor. When connect to the FC4 machine using the usb device, the manager can see the devide like /dev/sdb Geom 4998/255/63 Maxtor A RES C64K.
FC4 normally autoload all removable usb devices, except this. When I run

mount /dev/sdb /mnt/ -t vfat
the message is " can't read the superblock"

I need to access the hd to copy some important files.
Can say goodby to my hd?

pljvaldez · 04-03-2008, 12:43 PM

Try using testdisk. It can sometimes repair partition tables. Typically, you should make a byte by byte copy of the drive to an image using dd, then work on the image. But I realize space sometimes prohibit that (after all, who has a 500 GB of free space laying around when you have a big drive).

If testdisk doesn't fix the drive, you can try recovering the files with photorec and/or foremost, but they only work on particular file types.

Jose Rivas · 04-03-2008, 03:25 PM

Thanks, I'll try. The FC4 run in a SATA 80GB and the half is free space.
Note: FC4 64bit running in a HP dx5150 MT 64bit AMD.