LinuxQuestions.org - Troubles mounting and recognizing a Maxtor Firewire drive

I am trying to backup my Linux partition on a Maxtor Firewire 1394 300 GB hard drive. I am running dual-boot with Mandriva Linux 2006.0 and Windows XP. I used disk drake to partition the hard drive into two partitions, one mounted to /mnt/Media06_X (read-only for windows use) and one mounted to /mnt/Maxtor. I believe these are /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb5 respectively. I had the system working for a while where I could move files to the /dev/sdb5 a.k.a. /mnt/maxtor partition, but I was receiving an error that it had run out of memory after using only 3 GB (on a 130 GB partition). I realized that I had not actually mounted the partition in disk drake, so I went in and mounted it. I then received the running out of memory error after only filling it with 700 (ish) MB of info. I rebooted to see if that would help it mount properly or something. Now when I boot into linux, it does not automatically boot into KDE as it usually does. It prints the following screen:

Code:

                      Welcome to Mandriva Linux 2006.0

                  Press “I” to enter interactive setup.

Usb 2-1: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3

Configuring Kernel Parameters:                                            [ OK ]

Setting clock (local time) :Mon May 29 16:16:59 CDT 2006              [ OK ]

Setting hostname localhost:            [ OK ]

Checking root filesystem

/dev/sda7: clean, 39156/768544 files, 1345619/1534199 blocks            [ OK ]

Remounting root filesystem in read-write mode:        [ OK ]

Activating swap partitions:                    [ OK ]

Checking filesystems

Fsck.ext2/dev/sdb5



The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:

        e2fsck –b 8193 <device>



:No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/sdb5

/dev/sda9: clean, 147731/2845248 files, 3635919/5687002 blocks

/dev/sda6: clean, 136513/2048000 files, 2232432/4092550 blocks



Failed to check filesystem do you want to repair the errors? (Y/N)

(beware, you can lose data)

At this point I enter “y”

Code:

y

e2fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)



The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:

        e2fsck –b 8193 <device>



:No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/sdb5

/dev/sda9: clean, 147731/2845248 files, 3635919/5687002 blocks

/dev/sda6: clean, 136513/2048000 files, 2232432/4092550 blocks

e2fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)                [ FAILED ]



***An error occurred during the files system check.

***Dropping you to a shell: the system will reboot

***When you leave the shell.

Give root password for maintenance

(or type Control-D to continue):

I enter the root password

Code:

bash: dircolors: command not found

bash: locale: command not found

bash: tty: command not found

bash: tty: command not found

bash: head: command not found

(Repair filesystem) 1 # _

Then I enter “fdisk –l” so that I can show you what the system recognizes.

Code:

(Repair filesystem) 1 # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes



Device                  Boot        Start        End        Blocks        Id        System

/dev/sda1        *        1        2807        22547196        7        HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda2                2808        9729        55600965        5        Extended

/dev/sda5                2808        3316        4088511        83        Linux

/dev/sda6                3956        5993        16370203+        83        Linux

/dev/sda7                5994        6757        6136798+        83        Linux

/dev/sda8                6758        6897        1124518+        82        Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/sda9                6898        9729        22748008+        83        Linux

Note, no mention of /dev/sdb at all. What do I do to get it to recognize the Maxtor drive again? Based on guides I have recently read, I assume the problem is that I partitioned and mounted it wrong in the first place.