I added a 250Gig external USB drive to an old laptop I'm running Ubuntu 6.06 on so I can transfer some big files.

It was NSTF and did mount but would only mount as read only.
I changed the partition to ext3 with mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda1.

I was copying right along when about 680 Megs I get a message i'm out of space. A df doesn't show my usb drive. fstab doesn't show it either. Nothing under fdisk -l either. I can list change to the mount /mnt/usbdrive just fine and get a list.

Did I miss a step somewhere when I partitioned? How can I tell how much space is on that drive?

I try to do everything with a command line.
Thanks in advance......

du on the drive shows me 683M used.

If DF and fdisk do not show the drive then is it actually mounted? If this is the case then you are writing to the / partition and not the external drive.
How did you mount the drive?

I mounted with
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive

Mike

So is the drive mounted?
Were there any error or warning messages?

That is the odd part. I can't tell. There were no errors. I can physically get on that drive, I just can't get any information on it. I just tried umount and it says not mounted.

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive now tells me
mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device

Check the permissions for /mnt/usbdrive.
Also check the output of the demsg command. Does it show any errors for your external drive?

sda1 is usually your primary drive which would be mounted on / so I'm a little confused.
As per michaelk's post #2, I think you're not copying to your external disk.
run and check out the size of your / partition, if it's at 100% that would confirm it. I don't think your 250Gb drive is /dev/sda1. If it's your only other attached disk, have you got a sdb one? If so, I reckon that would be it.

Play Bonny!

I would first check to see what drives the computer recognizes

cat /proc/partitions

Explain it in detail.
Which distro are you using?
Post the output of
#fdisk -l
#mount -l

I'm sure it is something simple I missed. Thanks for your assistance.

I'm running Ubuntu 6.06.

I origionally mounted the fat drive like this
mkdir /mnt/usbdrive
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive

it showed up in fstab but I couldn't write to it so I partitioned it with
mkfs.ext3

Now I can cd to /mnt/usbdrive, but I don't think it is on that usbdrive....


[root@gate mnt]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 6495 MB, 6495068160 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 839 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 456 3447328+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 457 839 2895480 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 457 548 695488+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 549 839 2199928+ 83 Linux
[root@gate mnt]# mount -l
/dev/hda1 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime) []
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw)
/dev/hda6 on /home type ext3 (rw,noatime) []
[root@gate mnt]#
[root@gate mnt]#
[root@gate mnt]#

Mike

What is the make/model of your external drive?
Plug the drive in and then look at the output of the dmesg command.
Do you see any messages that your drive is recognized?
Since the output of the fdisk command does not show anything on the drive there must be something else happening.

Does this drive require a seperate power supply?

Sorry, but this distro is way out of date. So you are making life very difficult for yourself.

I remember 6.06 well - it was the first, for me, that almost dealt with USB disks, but it was full of faults, and errors and "workarounds".

If you have data on a 6.06 installation then I suggest you:

- Boot from a recent "live CD" eg ubuntu 10.04.
- Plug in a USB disk, it'll pop up on your desktop
- Mount your old 6.06 partition (you can now do this through the GUI)
- Copy the old files to the USB disk
- Check that the files are really there
- Unmount the USB disk.

- Install a more up to date distro and then restore your files from the USB disk.

I know what you are dealing with because I recently retired a 6.06 installation, which was "working fine" except ....... too many problems.

Good luck.

Yeah ubuntu 6.06 is very old.
What tredegar is telling is right.
You must back up all your data and then install something newer.
The old kernels donot support a lot of things.
If you are used to ubuntu then ubuntu 10.04 is the best choice for you.
Best of luck.


Note: if is ntfs partition you should mount it as,
mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive
or
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive

Okay,
I upgraded to 10.04. The first time failed miserably. The installer actually quit citing to many errors.

I brought the laptop to work today and am working on it here. I checked the disk and memory. All looked fine so I tried again. It went fine this time. THis time when I added my external usb drive I did get a message saying it wsa sdb.
I fdisked it and am now trying to format but I'm getting loads of "device descriptor read/64, error -71" errors. Sounds like something from the Flintstones with a little guy in there with a hammer and chisel.I'll let it run for another few hours and see what happens. This older machine probably uses USB1.

From that, I wonder if I had the wrong device under 6.06, and if I tried /dev/sdb it would have worked. Anyway, better that I upgraded.

mgideon,

You are really stretching my patience here.

In your first post you say it's "an old laptop". How much trouble would it have been for you tell us exactly what it is, and when it was made?

Now you tell us that it's only USB 1.0 capable, so this puts it at (my guess) 2001 or before because USB 2.0 was introduced in 2001.

That's OLD for a laptop, which aren't as solidly engineered as desktops (to save weight & cost).
It could well be that parts of it are broken, or manufactured to the wrong specification.

Please don't get me wrong, I am still running linux on hardware that is 12y+ old, but at least I am aware of its limitations.

A 250GB HDD will take forever to fsck if it is full of data (well, 24Hrs maybe) as USB 1.0 is (max) 12Mb/s (~0.183 MB/s)) whilst USB2.0 is 480 Mb/s (~57 MB/s), on a good day. There is a BIG difference.

Then you say
Don't you understand that we can't help you if you do not tell us exactly what the errors were?

Unlike windows, linux is usually quite specific about what the errors are. If you don't post the errors (even if you do not understand them) we cannot help you diagnose the problem.
But perhaps this problem is already solved?

So the point I am making is please be a little more forthcoming with the real specs of the hardware you are using. Perhaps tell us the make/ model number, not only of your laptop but also of this external HDD. Is it also > 10y old?

Then perhaps we can help further.

It might also be helpful to us if you updated your LQ profile (see mine, at the left?) to tell us where you live, because if it says "Iran", for example, we'll understand that maybe you do not have reliable electricity and your hardware options are likely to be limited: We can then tailor our advice to help you best, without "making assumptions".

Hope this helps.