Re: [gentoo-user] My Gentoo and Windows don't get along on vfat

[J. Roeleveld]

On Friday, September 22, 2017 12:56:01 PM CEST Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> He guys,
>
> I regularly attach a friend’s external HDD to my laptop or NAS, both running
> “standard” Gentoo. The main partition is fat32 formatted. On and off she
> has problems mounting the drive, usually after I had it connected to one of
> my machines.
>
> It happened again today. So chronologically:
> 1) Someone else attached the drive to his Windows 10 laptop and put a few
>    Gigs into a single folder.
> 2) Then I attached it to my NAS, which didn’t even create a device for it. I
> read some hardware error in the system log.
> 3) I attached it to my laptop. It also showed the error message (see below),
> but it did create a device and I could mount the data partition.
>
> Sep 22 12:14:53 kern kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result:
> Sep 22 12:14:53 kern kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result:
> hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Sep 22 12:14:53 kern kernel: sd
> 7:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Hardware Error [current] [descriptor] Sep
> 22 12:14:53 kern kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: No additional
> sense information Sep 22 12:14:53 kern kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB:
> ATA command pass through(16) 85 06 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e5
> 00
>
>
> When I had the drive hooked to my laptop in 3), I was shuffling stuff around
> on it (mostly copying and deleting a few files from the folder mentioned in
> 1) and renaming files in other places). Today she left me a note saying her
> Windows needed to check the drive and now that folder was missing. I found
> that  Windows “recovered” its contend into /FOUND.001 with all filenames
> lost. m(
>
> Naturally, I always unmount the drive prior to removing it physically,
> usually with KDE’s media manager. The drive (or the controller in the case?)
> contains a cdrom emulation to offer drivers and something called “WD
> SmartWare”. *shiver* I always wonder whether this plays a part with our
> problems. When the drive is connected to Windows – IIRC – first the cdrom
> appears, and after a while disappears and makes way for the actual data
> partition.

aargh...
I stopped using those WD drives, if you want to disable that part, follow 
instructions on the WD support page:
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=3835
(If this works)

> Do you have similar experiences and maybe even a tip on how to make her and
> my systems play along better? The only thing coming to my mind right now is
> to ditch fat32 and go with something more robust like exfat(?) or ntfs.

As mentioned, I stopped using drives like that. Never did encounter similar 
issues, but then I only used those with MS Windows systems in the past.

My guess is, you unmount the cd-partition, instead of the actual data 
partition. The broken firmware in those drives cause issues with the drivers, 
which is what that "cdrom" partition actually tries to fix.

Best advice: Scrap that drive and get one without the cdrom-partition.

I use WD Elements drives, these don't come with that cr*p.


--
Joost