Cannot delete on USB External Drive

[andybleaden]

I have a large and seemingly corrupted directory on an external HDD which shows itself to be bigger than the HDD itself ...tried to delete and rm it but get nowhere. Shows this on etc/fstab

/dev/sdd1 <mount\040point> auto users,noauto,atime,rw,nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0

I have been able to write to it before but not anymore

Any clues

[Qqmike]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

Are you trying to delete everything on the entire partition sdd1?
If so, you can use GParted Live CD to delete the partition sdd1.
Then start over by creating a new partition and formatting it (using GParted Live CD).

[andybleaden]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

nope it is just an old music folder that appears to have thousands of files 9 terrabytes ) when in fact it is about maybe 100mb...really puzzling as they come up as read only

[Qqmike]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

And so, as r-o, obviously you cannot try deleting just one music file ...
Boy, filesystems is not my cup of tea, sorry. But Herman has a deal on repairing Linux filesystems, maybe something there would apply here, I don't know:

Bigpond, home: http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/
(click to his Filesystem page)

or, one of our filesystem guys might have a better idea.

[dibl]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

I have a large and seemingly corrupted directory

More than "seemingly" I would say. :P

You may or may not be able to copy files from that drive to another one that is not corrupted. I would say try to copy off, one at a time, or a few at a time, the ones that are important to you. No guarantees that they will be intact.

Then use gparted (I like the Live CD) and nuke that partition and re-format it.

[andybleaden]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

right./...will give it a go ...it is strange as it is only three folders....in a larger directory of hundreds...they all were deleted

Thought I had it sorted

[andybleaden]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

Go this on ls-l for media...the naughty usb is elements ...from 1970?

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 2008-01-20 19:06 cdrom -> cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-01-20 19:06 cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-01-20 19:06 cdrom1
drwxr-xr-x 16 andy andy 32768 1970-01-01 01:00 Elements
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 2008-01-20 19:06 floppy -> floppy0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-01-20 19:06 floppy0
drwxr-xr-x 8 andy andy 4096 2008-10-02 14:14 hdb1
drwxr-xr-x 3 andy andy 4096 2008-02-28 17:22 music
drwxr-xr-x 9 andy root 32768 1970-01-01 01:00 My Book

[dibl]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

What filesystem/format is it?

[andybleaden]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

er um how do I check that?p10

[dibl]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

In your fstab file, it looks like it is set at "auto" which kinda means "whatever" -- no help there.

So, if you can run KMenu > System > Partition Editor, and in the upper right window change it to show /dev/sdd1, it should show the filesystem type. DON'T change anything while you're running the Partition Editor -- just use it to look at that disk.

The other way to look at it is from the console, in which you can enter

sudo fdisk -lu

and it will list all partitions and filesystem types.

sudo df -ht

will do the trick as well.

[andybleaden]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

First I got ( the problem one is 500gb at the end)

sudo fdisk -lu

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders, total 78165360 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6f1e8855

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 25173854 12586896 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 25173855 29366819 2096482+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 29366820 78156224 24394702+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders, total 390721968 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9007872d

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 63 390716864 195358401 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8f9c798a

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 63 625137344 312568641 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Disk /dev/sdd: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8d399bc0

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 63 976751999 488375968+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
andy@andy-desktop:~$

[dibl]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

/dev/sdd1 63 976751999 488375968+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

There's your answer.

You might want to try to look at it from Windows (if you still have bootable Windows on that machine).

[andybleaden]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

nope...been clean from windows (except from when the pc died for 2 months in the winter )for a couple of years now. Guess I will have to leave it...the three folders have about 9000 files in them but they are non existent ie they all equal about 1.5 tb according to properties but the disc is only 500 gb...classic windows dumping I guess.

I really appreciate your help on this and it is a shame I can just nuke these few mini (but maxi !) folders

thanks dibl

[dibl]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

Ahhh, well, -- if you don't mind losing the "data", KMenu > System > Partition Editor, and find that drive using the window in the upper right corner, and then format it ext3 and you're back in business with the original space available. Good luck with it!

[andybleaden]

Re: Cannot delete on USB External Drive

right ..that sounds a good plan ...might have to install the partition editor...I guess it is in the repos tho...it ain't in my system menu yet