Hi all,

I did not find the solution to my problem reading other posts so I apologize in advance if this question has been solved in a previous thread...

I recently started having input/output errors when trying to access directories on my external HD. Today I moved the content of my external HD to a single directory before starting a backup. Since then I can not access this backup directory anymore although the external HD automatically mounts when I turn it on.

> ls: cannot access backup_all: Input/output error

fdisk -l returns the following

Disk /dev/sdc: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20673 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x20b9746a

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 13560 102513568+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 13561 20519 52610040 5 Extended
/dev/sdc5 13561 20519 52610008+ b W95 FAT32

and mount for this partition returns:

/dev/sdc1 on /media/EXTERNAL type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,utf8,shortname=winnt,uid=1001)

I tried to run fschk.vfat /dev/sdc and it gave me:

Logical sector size is zero.

I tried my luck starting the external HD in Windows but it wont show up in the explorer. What should I do to be able to mount it in windows and is there any way this would fix the problem?

I'm running xubuntu kernel v 2.6.27-14-generic and the external HD is an acomdata. Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks in advance

One should never run a file system check on a mounted partition. Unmount the partitions and run a file system check.

Secondly,

/dev/sdc1 * 1 13560 102513568+ 83 Linux

reports as a Linux File system on /dev/sdc1 where as,

says it's FAT32.

I believe the next step you should be taking is backing up the data, unmounting the partitions and run a file system check on them.

Hey Eth1,

Thanks a lot for your reply. I don't think I ran the file system check on the mounted partition but as you pointed out "fdisk -l" and "mount" show some inconsistencies regarding the type of file system used on /dev/sdc1. I'll try to get a hand on some disk space as soon as possible and hopefully these input/output errors wont keep me from backing up the partition...

Alexis

The id indicator in the partition table is just that - an indicator. The filesystem type recognised by mount will be (mostly) correct. You can also use something "blkid" to confirm.
I would be more concerned about that geometry - a disk that big should be LBA. 240 heads doesn't look right.

Thank you Syg00 and sorry for the late reply. I checked the output of blkid for the external HD and it does indeed return the same file format as mount. So it's "vfat" but I dont quite understand why the device isn't recognized in Windows... is there any point backing up what seems to be a corrupted partition? How does one normally go about fixing that? Thanks again!

Alexis