External drives not being seen

Fixit7 · 02-05-2016, 07:37 AM

I have 2 external drives.

About 50% of the time, they are not seen.

I then have to reboot and eventually they do appear.

What is going on ?

Gary Baker · 02-05-2016, 09:56 AM

Plug and unplug them in directly to the computer.

Fixit7 · 02-05-2016, 10:10 AM

I did so and only one drive showed and it was unmounted. ??

I use a bash script to backup files...it will not work if the drive is not mounted.

Would the drives mount more reliably if I made 2 partitions on each drive ?

One a ntfs and the other ext3.

I need a ntfs because that is where my disk images are stored.

Gary Baker · 02-06-2016, 06:03 AM

Ok I have had a lot of problems with this. Use these commands fdisk -l, DMESG ,lsusb and more. If you see evidence of the drives they are good. If you see no evidence of the drive they are probably bad or need to be plugged in. Are these thumb drives or disk drives. Good Luck.

frankbell · 02-07-2016, 10:09 PM

More information might be helpful.

What distro/version and what make/model external drives (I am assuming they are USB drives)?

Are they in /etc/fstab or are you relying on automount?

What are the contents of /etc/mtab before and after they mount?

Have you looked in /var/log/dmesg and /var/log/messages, and, if so, what have you found?

Fixit7 · 02-08-2016, 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frankbell

More information might be helpful.

What distro/version and what make/model external drives (I am assuming they are USB drives)?

Are they in /etc/fstab or are you relying on automount?

What are the contents of /etc/mtab before and after they mount?

Have you looked in /var/log/dmesg and /var/log/messages, and, if so, what have you found?

I use Slacko 6.3.0

Quote:

VendorID=0480 ProductID=b001 Rev=01.00
Manufacturer=Toshiba
Product=Ext HDD
--
VendorID=1058 ProductID=0837 Rev=10.72
Manufacturer=Western Digital
Product=My Passport 0837

USB DRIVES (parted)

Model: Toshiba Ext HDD (scsi)
Drive: /dev/sdc: 500GB
--
Model: WD My Passport 0837 (scsi)
Drive: /dev/sdd: 1000GB

They are in fstab.

mtab after mounting

Quote:

rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev/root / ext3 rw,relatime,errors=continue,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
devtmpfs /dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=1503500k,nr_inodes=218079,mode=755 0 0
none /proc proc rw,relatime 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw,relatime,gid=2,mode=620,ptmxmode=000 0 0
none /sys sysfs rw,relatime 0 0
shmfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,relatime,size=746816k 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs rw,relatime,size=746816k 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw,relatime,size=1048576k 0 0
/dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5 ext3 rw,relatime,errors=continue,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/sdc2 /mnt/sdb2 fuseblk rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sdc5 /mnt/sdb5 fuseblk rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 fuseblk rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sdb2 /mnt/sdb2 fuseblk rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,blksize=4096 0 0

Before mounting

Quote:

rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev/root / ext3 rw,relatime,errors=continue,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
devtmpfs /dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=1503500k,nr_inodes=218079,mode=755 0 0
none /proc proc rw,relatime 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw,relatime,gid=2,mode=620,ptmxmode=000 0 0
none /sys sysfs rw,relatime 0 0
shmfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,relatime,size=746816k 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs rw,relatime,size=746816k 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw,relatime,size=1048576k 0 0
/dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5 ext3 rw,relatime,errors=continue,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 fuseblk rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,blksize=4096 0 0

pan64 · 02-08-2016, 07:36 AM

I have a RPi2 and it sometimes mounts my usb drive, sometimes not. It depends on the order, how the devices are detected. Something like a race condition.

sundialsvcs · 02-08-2016, 07:37 AM

USB drives rely in part on the "hotplug" configuration/daemon to respond to the USB-device-inserted event by mounting the disk (if it is determined to be a disk). Most distros "do this magic for you automagically," since you typically expect such things to "just work," but it's possible that yours did not.

Fixit7 · 02-08-2016, 01:33 PM

I just manually mount it if it does not automatically mount.

Then I re-run by backup scripts.

I will see if there is a bash method of determining if a partition is mounted.

Fixit7 · 02-08-2016, 01:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan64

I have a RPi2 and it sometimes mounts my usb drive, sometimes not. It depends on the order, how the devices are detected. Something like a race condition.

You are right.

Sometimes a partition is sdb2 or it may be sdc2.

So in my backup scripts, I do this so I know the files get copied.

cp -u Puppy_6.3.0_Bash_Scripts.zip /mnt/sdc2/Linux_Files
cp -u Puppy_6.3.0_Bash_Scripts.zip /mnt/sdb2/Linux_Files

frankbell · 02-08-2016, 08:37 PM

Try identifying the partitions in /etc/fstab by UUID and let us know whether that makes a difference. At the least, it should keep them from changing mount points.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-f...-update-fstab/

Fixit7 · 02-16-2016, 08:25 PM

I found the problem.

My two USB 3.0 ports went bad.

This is what I have.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-3-0-PCI-...EAAOSweW5VZojO