external harddrive errors

psykotrol · 05-10-2008, 03:30 PM

whenever I try to create a new folder in my external harddrive, it says "Error "Unsupported operation" creating new folder."

whats the problem? after canceling copying a large amount of files from my master to my external, all the sudden I get this error, what do I do?

jailbait · 05-10-2008, 04:13 PM

I suggest that you check out the partition in question using fsck. umount the partition, run fsck against the partition to correct any errors, and then mount the partition.

Did you try to move the files with the dd command? If you canceled a dd command in the middle then the partition may be so badly damaged that fsck cannot fix it.

---------------------
Steve Stites

psykotrol · 05-10-2008, 10:49 PM

well, now im not worried about copying the files per se, I just want to be able to access them.

first it wasnt mountable, now it is. after that, I tried to access a particularly large folder with over 30 gb of data, and said it had an input/output error, now thats gone. NOW it says 'The folder contents could not be displayed'.

Doesnt fsck run the risk of losing data?

tredegar · 05-11-2008, 01:56 AM

Note that fsck is only suitable for linux partitions formatted as ext2 or ext3

Quote:

Doesnt fsck run the risk of losing data?

Yes, but fsck is clever, and does its best to preserve data. If it finds data it doesn't know what to do with it puts it into lost+found, where you can often recover it.
If the disk is DOS formatted, maybe you should try some DOS-format recovery programs: eg fatback runs on linux.

onebuck · 05-11-2008, 11:48 AM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by tredegar

Note that fsck is only suitable for linux partitions formatted as ext2 or ext3

<snip>

Sorry but you statement about 'fsck' supports only ext2/3 is not correct;

Quote:

excerpt from 'man fsck'
In actuality, fsck is simply a front-end for the various file system
checkers (fsck.fstype) available under Linux. The file system-specific
checker is searched for in /sbin first, then in /etc/fs and /etc, and
finally in the directories listed in the PATH environment variable.
Please see the file system-specific checker manual pages for further
details.

SystemRescueCd has several good disk utilities.

This link and others are available from 'Slackware-Links' .

tredegar · 05-11-2008, 12:04 PM

Quote:

Sorry but you statement about 'fsck' supports only ext2/3 is not correct;

You are correct:
locate fsck | grep bin returns:

Code:

/sbin/dosfsck
/sbin/e2fsck
/sbin/fsck
/sbin/fsck.cramfs
/sbin/fsck.ext2
/sbin/fsck.ext3
/sbin/fsck.jfs
/sbin/fsck.minix
/sbin/fsck.msdos
/sbin/fsck.nfs
/sbin/fsck.reiser4
/sbin/fsck.reiserfs
/sbin/fsck.vfat
/sbin/fsck.xfs
/sbin/jfs_fsck
/sbin/jfs_fscklog
/sbin/reiserfsck
/usr/bin/hpfsck

So I suppose you just need to choose the appropriate one.
I have always just used fsck (for my ext3 partitions), maybe I should have used /sbin/fsck.ext3 ? It worked anyway.

Thanks, I learn something new every day