Removable USB Harddisk won't mount

[pixelhead]

Today I tried two of my removable drives and they did not mount. A popup comes up asking me what to do and when I click on "Open in new Window" nothing happens. No problems with USB cardreader, USB-Stick and IPod - they all work just fine.

Any hints?

Thanx in advance
Andreas

[mitchhobbs]

Re: Removable USB Harddisk won't mount

I've had similar problems before. Don't know why, but drives that used to mount wont. i think it's something to do with updates or something. Anyway, hook the drives back up and from terminal:

sudo mount -a

this basically is a command to "mount all". This should work but if not there are other options. With the drives hooked up go to:
k-menu--system settings--click the advanced tab at the top--then click "disk and filesystems"

this will display all disks attached to your computer, see if the disks are enabled or not and what the mount point is.

with the disks attached do from terminal:

kdesu kate /etc/fstab

and post the results here and identify which drives you want to mount. Depending on how well you know how to edit the "fstab" file, they might not be set to auto mount.

[pixelhead]

Re: Removable USB Harddisk won't mount

Hi Mitch,

thanks for your answer I'll test it later.

Just want to tell, that I can experience exactly the same problem on a different computer with the Kubuntu Live CD - no automounting

- Andreas

[pixelhead]

Re: Removable USB Harddisk won't mount

NEWS! Tried a third Harddisk and it worked for the Live CD (didn't try the installation yet) Figured out that one of the first two discs was broken (though it was readable under Windows...)
The other one of the first two discs is a 2,5' hard disk - maybe there is not enough power from the usb port? (though it works under Windows on the same port with no problem)

[javierrivera]

Re: Removable USB Harddisk won't mount

If it works under windows it's not probably a hardware problem.

The first thig that you should do is to try to mount the driver from the console and see it it will work.

$ pmount /dev/sda1

Should mount the driver sda1

You should also check the following command

$ dmesg

If the driver has been detected by the kernel, it should give you some lines like the next ones:

[17189538.744000] usb 5-7: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
[17189538.876000] usb 5-7: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[17189538.876000] scsi3 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[17189538.876000] usb-storage: device found at 5
[17189538.876000] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[17189543.876000] usb-storage: device scan complete
[17189543.876000]  Vendor: Maxtor 6 Model: Y080L0      Rev: 0 0
[17189543.876000]  Type:  Direct-Access           ANSI SCSI revision: 00
[17189543.880000] SCSI device sda: 160086528 512-byte hdwr sectors (81964 MB)
[17189543.880000] sda: Write Protect is off
[17189543.880000] sda: Mode Sense: 33 00 00 00
[17189543.880000] sda: assuming drive cache: write through
[17189543.880000] SCSI device sda: 160086528 512-byte hdwr sectors (81964 MB)
[17189543.884000] sda: Write Protect is off
[17189543.884000] sda: Mode Sense: 33 00 00 00
[17189543.884000] sda: assuming drive cache: write through
[17189543.884000] sda: sda1 sda2
[17189543.900000] sd 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
[17189543.900000] sd 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0

From those lines you can identify the name that you should give to pmount.

So, to be able to diagnose you problem.
a) Disconect your driver
b) Connect the driver
c) Type dmesg, and see if the last lines are like the above ones.
d) Try pmount.
e) Write here with any error messages.

Javier.