Lost sight of my externall HDD

[jollyjack]

It was OK yesterday - Dolphin was showing the three or four partitions I have on an external hard drive. Today, though, nothing.

I think it's my fault. I was copying stuff to a USB key drive, and there were some system messages about ignoring some thing/device in the future. I thought it was referring to the USB drive, but maybe not......

I ran this command

sudo fdisk -l

and it only showed the internal HDD.

I also tried "hot-plugging" (is that the term?) with no response.

Any help gratefully received....

Thanks

UPDATE

I've just booted up GPARTED from a CD - no external HDD showing. Then I booted up W7 (dual boot) - again, no external HDD.

It looks like the HDD is faulty.....?

[oshunluvr]

Unplug the drive. Open a konsole window. Plug the drive in. Type dmesg in the konsole. You should see something like this:

.[817043.776102] usb 2-2.3: new full-speed USB device number 37 using ehci-pci
[817043.920099] usb 2-2.3: new high-speed USB device number 38 using ehci-pci
[817044.015341] usb 2-2.3: New USB device found, idVendor=13fe, idProduct=3100
[817044.015345] usb 2-2.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[817044.015347] usb 2-2.3: Product: Patriot Memory
[817044.015349] usb 2-2.3: Manufacturer:         
[817044.015351] usb 2-2.3: SerialNumber: 07A51100655B1231
[817044.015714] scsi30 : usb-storage 2-2.3:1.0
[817045.039125] scsi 30:0:0:0: Direct-Access              Patriot Memory   PMAP PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[817045.039772] sd 30:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg10 type 0
[817045.844860] sd 30:0:0:0: [sdj] 15646720 512-byte logical blocks: (8.01 GB/7.46 GiB)
[817045.848357] sd 30:0:0:0: [sdj] Write Protect is off
[817045.848362] sd 30:0:0:0: [sdj] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[817045.851860] sd 30:0:0:0: [sdj] No Caching mode page present
[817045.851865] sd 30:0:0:0: [sdj] Assuming drive cache: write through
[817045.861856] sd 30:0:0:0: [sdj] No Caching mode page present
[817045.861861] sd 30:0:0:0: [sdj] Assuming drive cache: write through
[817045.877637]  sdj: sdj1 sdj2
[817045.885986] sd 30:0:0:0: [sdj] No Caching mode page present
[817045.885991] sd 30:0:0:0: [sdj] Assuming drive cache: write through
[817045.885995] sd 30:0:0:0: [sdj] Attached SCSI removable disk

If not, your drive isn't working. Also try lsusb to see if it's listed at all.

[jollyjack]

Hi,

Done that and got several pages of output. What should I be looking for?

Tx

[oshunluvr]

If you just plugged in the drive you should see similar to what I posted above except instead of "sdj" it will say sdb or sdc or whatever letter is next available. lsusb should show a list of all plugged in devices along with their bus and device numbers, ID number, and product name.

[oshunluvr]

Point being: if it's there is either of those lists, the device is detected and probably can be used once we figure out it's not being setup properly. If it's not in either list - it's more likely a hardware issue.

[jollyjack]

OK, the output from DMESG mentions the internal HD (sda) but doesn't mention the external HDD (sdb). Nor does the output from LSUSB mention it.

So, it looks like it's dead.

Thanks for all the help - I appreciated it.

Cheers

[jollyjack]

FWIW

I've just opened the HDD - I thought I might be able to salvage the actual disk by putting it into another enclosure. No chance! It looks like there was a short circuit where the internal power cable plugs into the actual disk - plastic all melted and soot on the casing. Ah well.

Cheers

[SteveRiley]

Wow. Sure, Mr. Phelps. Whatever you say

[jollyjack]