You are not logged in.

#1 2010-08-19 15:57:42

gaudencio
Member
Registered: 2009-03-30
Posts: 33

External hdd not recognized by fdisk or dmesg

Just what the title says. It worked fine before, then I had a clear up (real world) and moved the hard disk out of the room for a few days. After that, nothing. usb cables are fine. The docking station works fine as a usb hub. I haven't tried it with any other hard disk, since I don't have a spare lying around, but my hunch is that it would work fine. The drive has power, spins, makes a bit of noise on startup, but just isn't picked up by dmesg. It's a brand new WD green 2tb drive that's shown no signs of failure.

The only thing I can think it might be to do with is the hdparm software. I used that to set the sleep timeout when I got the drive, and it's behaved fine since, but perhaps it somehow thinks it's still in "sleep" mode? However, I can't use hdparm to check it because the device doesn't exist in /dev/sdx. (btw it still puts itself to sleep ten minutes after being turned on, as it's supposed to)

Any ideas where to head next? I really don't want the pain of sending the drive back.

PS - I would ask on the WD forums, but in all honesty the arch forums are the only ones that ever give decent replies. All manufacturer forums seem to be filled with morons who've never heard of linux....in my experience anyway

Thanks for any pointers in the right direction

Gaudencio

Offline

#2 2010-08-22 08:45:53

gaudencio
Member
Registered: 2009-03-30
Posts: 33

Re: External hdd not recognized by fdisk or dmesg

so.....any chance of a reply?

Offline

#3 2010-08-22 09:44:19

KimTjik
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2007-08-22
Posts: 715

Re: External hdd not recognized by fdisk or dmesg

Difficult to reply since I don't know what to suggest. I have dock-station, mainly used for maintenance of customer computers, using eSATA, and for some reason it started to work less well sometime pre 2.6.32x kernel. Before that it did spin up and immediately get mounted. Nowadays it spin up, stops and then start ticking for a while (sometimes a minute) and eventually gets ready.

When you "isn't picked up by dmesg", do you by that indicate that you don't get any messages at all? No "time out" or error messages, nothing?

Offline

#4 2010-08-22 14:06:21

lagagnon
Member
From: an Island in the Pacific...
Registered: 2009-12-10
Posts: 1,087
Website

Re: External hdd not recognized by fdisk or dmesg

Unplug the drive, open a terminal and type "sudo tail -f /var/log/messages.log", then plug in the drive and show us what messages you get in the terminal.


Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room. Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there. Religion is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there and shouting "I found it!". Science is looking for a black cat in a dark room with a flashlight.

Offline

#5 2010-08-22 15:55:17

gaudencio
Member
Registered: 2009-03-30
Posts: 33

Re: External hdd not recognized by fdisk or dmesg

From dmesg I got nothing, but now messages.log shows:

Aug 22 16:50:29 lapdesk kernel: usb 1-3.4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
Aug 22 16:50:29 lapdesk kernel: scsi4 : usb-storage 1-3.4:1.0
Aug 22 16:50:30 lapdesk kernel: scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WDC WD20 EARS-00S8B1           PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 CCS
Aug 22 16:50:30 lapdesk kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
Aug 22 16:50:30 lapdesk kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] 3907028992 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 TB/1.81 TiB)
Aug 22 16:50:30 lapdesk kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
Aug 22 16:50:30 lapdesk kernel: sdc: sdc1
Aug 22 16:50:30 lapdesk kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk

and it's allowed me to mount it. I'm going to have a play with it to see if all's ok and I'll report back. For the time being, I'm hoping it's just a crappy enclosure, but unfortunately I don't have any other to try it with.

Thanks for now

Offline

#6 2010-08-22 17:01:39

skunktrader
Member
From: Brisbane, Australia
Registered: 2010-02-14
Posts: 1,538

Re: External hdd not recognized by fdisk or dmesg

I had the same problem with a drive that was not sync'd / unmounted cleanly before shutting down.  It "magically" started working again after plugging it into a windows box and chkdsk'ing it

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB