Re: [gentoo-user] USB drive dead? (Commands to check?)

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 2:39 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 12:07 PM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 5:21 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>   I seem to have lost an external USB drive I've been using on my
>>> MythTV backend server for video storage. What commands can I try to
>>> get it to wake up or at least show me what's working and what isn't?
>>> The drive shows under fdisk /dev/sda. I can see the large partition,
>>> and it seems to be the right size, according to fdisk anyway, but I
>>> cannot mount it using mount, and so far I cannot get e2fsck to do
>>> anything.
>>
>> I had similar errors with an external USB drive recently and it turned
>> out to be related to the USB port on the computer. (I suspect the USB
>> controller was overloaded). I plugged it into a port on a different
>> controller and it started working normally again. So some easy things
>> I would suggest trying before messing with data:
>>
>> A) diferent USB port on the same computer
>> B) plug it into a different computer entirely
>> C) try a different USB cable
>>
>>
>
> By definition this will be true when I move it from the PPC-based Myth
> backend to the AMD64-based MythTV frontend here in the office. If it
> 'magically' starts working then that sort of cause may well be the
> reason.
>
> I'll report back on this but won't likely touch it before the weekend.

So last night my replacement drive - 1394-bsed, not USB - went
off-line during recording time so sll the late evening recordings were
hosed.

What's with Linux support of external drives? Is it just not reliable
enough to depend on? This was not a drive failure but just a bunch of
sense code message problems and everything quit. I probably could have
spent time removing drivers, etc, and then restarting it but I just
rebooted and everything came back.

I used to use this drive for weeks at a time on one of my Windows
boxes. No problems at that time so I have no strong reason to suspect
the drive when this is the second drive issue in a few days wit this
system.

I wonder how I determine if it's a drive problem or a kernel/driver problem?

- Mark