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

[Mark Knecht]

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. Both of these fail:


mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /video
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /video

   I have power cycled the drive and I've rebooted the MacMini. Nothing changed.

Thanks in advance,
Mark

MacMini ~ # fdisk /dev/sda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 19929.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 163.9 GB, 163928604672 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19929 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa9b5c6b5

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1       19929   160079661   83  Linux

Command (m for help):



MacMini ~ # df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda4             75890040  37169416  34865560  52% /
udev                     10240       156     10084   2% /dev
shm                     257396         0    257396   0% /dev/shm
MacMini ~ # fsck -t ext3 /dev/sda
fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
fsck.ext3: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
fsck.ext3: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda

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>

MacMini ~ # e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sda
e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda

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>

MacMini ~ # fsck -t ext3 /dev/sda1
fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
fsck.ext3: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short
read while tr            ying to open /dev/sda1
Could this be a zero-length partition?
MacMini ~ # e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sda1
e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda1

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>

MacMini ~ # e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sda
e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda

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>

MacMini ~ #