I have a 250 GB hard disk that hooks up via USB. Inside my computer I have 120GB and 250GB. I recently installed the latest release of Ubuntu. I backed up all my files to my USB disk and began to copy them to my new partitions. I was playing around with the new OS and I could access my USB disk just fine. After one on the reboots I could no longer access the drive. It was no longer auto mounting. This is the only back up of many of my files. I have many priceless pictures of my family on the USB drive. My mother is fighting a battle with cancer and I have several pictures of her from a vacation we recently took. I certainly do not want to loose those pictures because my time with her is probably limited. I have copied some stuff from my terminal to show you people.

I hope that this can be fixed.






1.


caleb@vortex:~$ sudo fdisk -ls
Password:

Disk /dev/hda: 122.9 GB, 122942324736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14946 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 124 995998+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda2 125 746 4996215 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 747 14946 114061500 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 12449 99996561 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 12450 30401 144199440 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/sda doesn't contain a valid partition table




2.


caleb@vortex:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/hda2
UUID=aabb90ee-1147-4625-ad23-7f5f93d8aef9 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/hdb1
UUID=5ca85868-eb91-486d-8f19-ed026782e7c4 /extra ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/hdb2
UUID=ebc1c58b-4e2e-4943-888a-cfc6f8fa3172 /extra2 ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/hda3
UUID=1fd0388d-bf49-4160-9047-a3fe441a14ce /home ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/hda1
UUID=175cf6d7-4773-4ffd-b99b-21f25aa10698 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdd /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0







3.




caleb@vortex:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 4.7G 2.3G 2.3G 50% /
varrun 252M 104K 252M 1% /var/run
varlock 252M 0 252M 0% /var/lock
procbususb 252M 140K 252M 1% /proc/bus/usb
udev 252M 140K 252M 1% /dev
devshm 252M 0 252M 0% /dev/shm
lrm 252M 33M 219M 14% /lib/modules/2.6.20-16-generic/volatile
/dev/hdb1 94G 188M 89G 1% /extra
/dev/hdb2 136G 188M 129G 1% /extra2
/dev/hda3 108G 215M 102G 1% /home
/dev/hdc 697M 697M 0 100% /media/cdrom0




I hope someone here can help me.

If you unplug and re-insert the usb cable, then run dmesg what output does it give you. Just the last couple lines should show up, see if your desktop doesn't give you an icon for it. Also, try mounting it as /dev/sda2 (depending on dmesg if it is sda, sdb etc.)

Here is some of the stuff I got from dmesg. There is certainly no icon.



[ 21.366593] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
[ 21.366760] scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[ 21.366843] usb-storage: device found at 2
[ 21.366846] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[ 21.366926] scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[ 21.366976] usb-storage: device found at 2
[ 21.366978] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[ 21.366991] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[ 21.366995] USB Mass Storage support registered.
[ 21.367255] usbcore: registered new interface driver hiddev


And also this.




[ 42.083625] sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
[ 42.083635] Additional sense: No additional sense information
[ 51.847813] sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
[ 51.847823] Additional sense: No additional sense information
[ 61.620114] sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
[ 61.620124] Additional sense: No additional sense information
[ 61.620184] unknown partition table
[ 61.620675] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
[ 61.627245] sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sdb
[ 71.366578] sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
[ 71.366588] Additional sense: No additional sense information
[ 81.064360] sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
[ 81.064371] Additional sense: No additional sense information
[ 90.778744] sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
[ 90.778753] Additional sense: No additional sense information
[ 100.517843] sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
[ 100.517853] Additional sense: No additional sense information
[ 110.240590] sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
[ 110.240601] Additional sense: No additional sense information
[ 119.946614] sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
[ 119.946625] Additional sense: No additional sense information
[ 129.736764] sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
[ 129.736775] Additional sense: No additional sense information
[ 139.509316] sda: Current: sense key: No Sense
[ 139.509327] Additional sense: No additional sense information
[ 142.963179] fuse init (API version 7.8)
[ 142.991139] lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven).
[ 143.041352] Adding 995988k swap on /dev/disk/by-uuid/175cf6d7-4773-4ffd-b99b-21f25aa10698. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:995988k






It claims that it is an unknown partition table.