USB hard drive recognition Samba and mediatomb
 

I have a Ubuntu plug server which I have been using with Samba and Mediatomb and two External USB drives.

I had it working about a year ago and then moved house and set it up again recently.

I had it working till yesterday when one of my children cut the power to one of the hard drives.

Since this I cannot get the system to recognise the drive that was unplugged. I have rebooted, powered down but cannot find the second rive.

When I setup my system again recently the system didn't work so I had to make some changes, I made two directories /dev/media2 and /dev/media3 where I mounted the two drives (sdb1 and sdb2). The system seemed to work fine with both mediatomb and samba.

After the forced powerdown;

/dev/media2 and 3 now seem to have disappeared and the 'working' hard disk is now recognised as sda1 and mounted on /media/external which is how it was before recent changes.

It seems something is taking the system back to previous state.

Any advice would be welcome.

Just rebooted system and 'working' drive is now sdb1 and is not mounted. Really confused :(

Hi, welcome to LQ!

Please try the following:
Power the machine down cleanly.
Disconnect the drive that won't be picked up from the USB port.
Boot the machine.
Once logged in, open a terminal and do "dmesg".
Open a 2nd terminal.
Plug the defunct HDD in.
In the 2nd terminal, run "dmesg".
Compare the output of both dmesg runs, namely the last 10 lines.
If there's any mention of your HDD, post the lines here.
If there isn't it's most likely physically damaged.


Cheers,
Tink

OK, your second post beat me :}

Please look for both drives in dmesg' output. If you didn't use
some unique identifier for the devices they get their name in a
first come, first served order.

Thanks for the help.

I get the following. I've included the bit about sda which seems to be working - well I can mount it anyway.

sdb seems problematic :(





usb-storage: device found at 5
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] 976773168 512-byte hardware sectors: (500 GB/465 GiB)
sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 28 00 00 00
sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1
sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access Iomega E xternal HD 0000 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 8089950 512-byte hardware sectors: (4.14 GB/3.85 GiB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 38 00 00 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb:<6>sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x3 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
__ratelimit: 10 callbacks suppressed
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 1
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 2
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 3
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x3 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 1
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 2
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 3
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x3 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 1
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x3 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
unable to read partition table
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x3 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x3 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x3 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x3 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0

What are the chances of sdb being a DVD drive w/ a faulty media in it?


Cheers,
Tink

No chance at all, there's no dvd drive.

I intend to check if the drive is damaged by using it on my Windows laptop.

It was working fine till the power supply was accidentally disconnected by one of my children.

I don't understand how the directories I created /dev/media2 /3 disappeared. Are the contents of the dev folder automatically generated?

I do understand how Samba can be 'presenting' the drives that no longer work to windows.

My sda drive seems to be working fine with mediatomb but the samba shares are pointing at directories that no longer exist. I can work at re-configuring them, but until I can get this drive recognised I'm struggling.
Thanks

Are you sure? I haven't seen any external HDDs w/ a 4GB size, ever.


Hope it all goes well, we'll try to help best as we can.


Cheers,
Tink

Sussed it. Not fully fixed, but the problem is a faulty power supply on one of the hard disks. It's not supplying enough juice to spin the disk fast enough.

Learnt quite a bit though like /dev is a RAM drive. That explains why I shouldn't mkdir there :) Duh!

Will get it sorted now. Thanks for all the help.

No,


You learned the most important step most computer techs never get.... That it runs on external source of power that can't be monitored by the computer....


Second off you also learned I can give you a software related answer ,but no matter if I were at a remote terminal logged into the system I couldn't fix the problem....

That's why I usually tend to stay away from Computer Tech's.... People still don't get that 95% of everything on this planet takes human manipulation to fix the problem....


I would suggest going to Newegg.com and buying the power supply. If you have time to wait this will save money and get a good rated power supply...

Keep in mind usually power supplies either work or are broken... So if the first one is bad send it back and get a new one...

After reading the Newegg reviews on power supplies I have come to the conclusion that 60% of all power supplies are good and the 34% are died on delivery so keep in mind 2/3 chance of getting a power supply that works... 6% unaccounted for are returned for power supply wiring is to short to reach comfortably to the motherboard or dvd / hard drives in the case....


Remind yourself to buy a can air also to clean out the case I imagine with all the electrical static energy that it will suck in a lot of dust....



Well good luck...

:)

Thanks for the advice, but it doesn't really apply in this case.