1 |
Hello, first, the disclaimer: take everything I'll say here as a starting |
2 |
point, not as an universal truth. I am by no means specialist in this kind |
3 |
of toys. |
4 |
|
5 |
On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:46:36 +0000, "Alan E. Davis" <lngndvs@×××××.com> |
6 |
wrote: |
7 |
> I can't think of a specific place to look for this, so will try the |
8 |
> eclectics at gentoo-user. |
9 |
> |
10 |
> A student handed me a USB flash drive with a video file on it he wanted |
11 |
to |
12 |
> offer to me to watch. It mounted automatically, I copied the file, then |
13 |
I |
14 |
> took the disk out of the drive and gave it to him. I cannot say with |
15 |
100% |
16 |
> certainty that I unmounted it. The file was completely copied. I am |
17 |
> pretty |
18 |
> careful, so I think I unmounted it. |
19 |
|
20 |
Even if you didn't, in my understanding, all that could cause (normally) |
21 |
is a broken file system. The effects will usually depends on whatever was |
22 |
happening at the moment, and at the fs you are using. Some mount options |
23 |
can influence this as well. To palliate the effects of a catastrophic plug |
24 |
off without having umounted before you can use the -osync mount option, |
25 |
which will enable synchronous writes (making your device seems slower, |
26 |
because writes will no longer be deferred/cached for a later oportunity). |
27 |
|
28 |
But, that's not a substitute for a true umount, or a sync. It's just a way |
29 |
to shorten the scope of any possible problem if you accidentelly unplug the |
30 |
drive without having used umount first. |
31 |
|
32 |
As a note, FAT is not precisely known for being too solid. |
33 |
|
34 |
> Today he came back to me, asking what happened to his disk. He said |
35 |
> nothing |
36 |
> it there anymore. I checked. Gparted says this drive (4 GB I think) |
37 |
has 2 |
38 |
> Terabytes of unallocated space. None of the Windoze gurus (so to speak) |
39 |
> around here know what to do. |
40 |
> |
41 |
> Any ideas? I'm afraid the little bit of progress I've made over the |
42 |
past |
43 |
> 13 years in advocating GNU/Linux and Free Softwrae, will be lost if this |
44 |
> problem isn't solved. |
45 |
|
46 |
Your problem with the size of the drive is a bit more alarming. It could |
47 |
be a problem in your partition table. In that case, the chance is high that |
48 |
testdisk can guess a valid partition table and restore the drive to a |
49 |
working state. However, it could also be a fortuitous electric accident |
50 |
that fried the unit, that happens sometimes, and it has nothing to do with |
51 |
you or linux. In any case, and to max the chance to recover anything, the |
52 |
first thing you should be doing is an image of the device, using dd, just |
53 |
in case. |
54 |
|
55 |
All this, assuming that the student didn't already mess up the drive. |
56 |
Anyway, if s/he truly saved the only copy of anything important in a |
57 |
pendrive and then sent it around the world, s/he almost deserves any pain |
58 |
that could derive from that action. |
59 |
|
60 |
-- |
61 |
Jesús Guerrero |