[SOLVED] no longer able to write to USB external HDD

[Nish]

This is a WD MyBook that is strictly storage and is formatted FAT 32.  After moving to a new place, digging it out of its box, hooking back up to PC, I can read from it fine.  But not write to it anymore.  First thought was there was some damage during the move, I booted XP but no problem, can write to it fine.

I also tried connecting to a different PC running PCLinuxOS and same result.  Can't write to it.

I had written to the drive from linux just a few weeks before the move so something had to happen and since there hasn't been updates to PCLOS (I am running 2009.2) it has to be hardware problem - but what magic has windows got that it works there?   What is the difference?

[muungwana]

could be a permission issue caused by the drive being mounted read only.

After you plug it in, what steps do you take to access contents on the drive?

[wayne1932]

Interesting that this should come up right now, because that is exactly the same issue that I am having.  I have not had a problem with my USB hard drive (my backup) until now.  I was in the process of copying three large files there, and something barfed, the first two got there, but the third one didn't.  Now I can't copy any files there.  Trying to chown, says it is read only.  Now why would that happen?  I am listed as the owner of the drive, and I can't even do anything with it with konqueror as root.  It's an 80GB drive with 49GB free formatted as fat32.  

Could this have something to do with recent updates?  

Edit:  Just booted into WinXP, and winders can't find the drive.  Also booted into KDE3.5.10, and it's not there either.  I looked at it under the control panel>hardware, and it took a long time for it to recognize that it was there.

[Nish]

I go to my computer or konqi like I used to and click on storage media. (Sometimes I have an icon on desktop now, and sometimes I don't - in the "old days" I normally always did, one difference) It shows up as 320G media and I click on it and the drive lights move and I see the contents like I used to.  I then can copy from it.  But if I try anything that involves writing to it, I get the nasty KDE critical error sound and a box saying I can't do that and the "cancel" button in the dialogue. Nothing more helpful than that.  NO message that it is read only and it is not. Not a permissions issue.  The permissions are exactly the same as for two thumb drives which still work fine - even in the front ports which are sometimes very flaky.

Why I keep thinking it must be some damage to the darned drive.  I have tried different USB ports (my fronts ones do have problems because of the case - that is another issue but this drive was always plugged into rear ones - I have tried all four in back)

It can't be SW update, 2009.2 has been frozen for ages and this drive was successfully written to on April 9 in my old apt.  That was the last time I wrote to it.  I moved April 17th and just recently dug it out of a box and connected.  I tried it on another machine that had a fresh install of 2009.2 and was only updated from youcantoo's frozen repo.  Same problem.

My next step I guess is to try 2010.  I have a very install of it on a little partition but I totally mutilated KDE desktop - lost all toolbars and menus, yikes!!! Maybe try and see if live CD can write to this thing?  Again, my XP install is having no problems writing to it.  Stumped.

update- just thought of something else. I may not have updated 2009.2 but I did install an early release of 2010 on this machine.  Could I have done something from that install to have caused the problem the USB drive?  I just booted 2010 and the drive is unwritable there as well.  I am at a loss.  I only have PCLOS's to go by but might try a live CD of something else to see if this is strictly a linux issue. 

[Old-Polack]

To test if it's the drive, or the mounting that's the problem, as root, create a directory, /mnt/usb then add a line to your /etc/fstab, also as root.

/dev/sd<whatever>    /mnt/usb      vfat       rw,user,noauto,exec,umask=000,iocharset=utf8       0 0

Replace <whatever> with the drive letter and partition number correct for that partition. Press the Enter key to start a new line, then save the file.

Plug in the drive, power on (if it has a separate power connection) ignore the pop ups if any, then open a terminal as your normal user, and enter;

$ mount /mnt/usb                         <Enter>

Open konqueror if on KDE3, or dolphin if on KDE4, and navigate to /mnt/usb. Try to create a new directory or file. If you can, it was only a permission problem. If, in spite of the settings, the drive is mounted read only, there may be corruption in the file system and it needs to have a filesystem check run on the unmounted partition to correct the problem.

[Nish]

I was unable to mount the drive in linux this morning - gparted said it had errors and was unavailable. So  I ran check and repair on it, supposedly it completed successfully "grew file system to fill" ?  But still unable to mount it. So I am in windows, copying the data off of it to harddrive. Yes, it still works fine in XP.  I can copy to it even. But it seems like access is slower than usual. So I will burn DVDs.  Oh my, many DVDs!  And then reformat.  I might see if WD has any windows diagnostic tools for it before reformatting.

Should I give a go at ext3 on it?  Maybe to get a better idea of what is wrong with it in linux?

The net is full of stories about these MyBooks, they are cheap SATAs in a case without adequate ventilation and a cheap controller.  There are supposedly ways to crack case open and try and run them directly SATA - might try that if reformatting doesn't work.  Nothing to lose at this point.

[Old-Polack]

I was unable to mount the drive in linux this morning - gparted said it had errors and was unavailable. So  I ran check and repair on it, supposedly it completed successfully "grew file system to fill" ?  But still unable to mount it. So I am in windows, copying the data off of it to harddrive. Yes, it still works fine in XP.  I can copy to it even. But it seems like access is slower than usual. So I will burn DVDs.  Oh my, many DVDs!  And then reformat.  I might see if WD has any windows diagnostic tools for it before reformatting.

Should I give a go at ext3 on it?  Maybe to get a better idea of what is wrong with it in linux?

The net is full of stories about these MyBooks, they are cheap SATAs in a case without adequate ventilation and a cheap controller.  There are supposedly ways to crack case open and try and run them directly SATA - might try that if reformatting doesn't work.  Nothing to lose at this point.

All my external drive partitions are formatted ext3 or ext4. Were it my drive, I'd have several partitions rather than a single one filling the whole disk. Should something like this happen again, it's a lot easier to transfer files to another partition, then reformat, than it is to burn many DVDs. I have 11 partitions on my 750 GB drive, and 15 on my 1 TB drive. It seems like I'm always changing partition sizes, or reformatting for new installations. There's always some empty space on different partitions to hold data temporarily, while changing either a partition or the formatting in one.

[Nish]

This is a small drive, just 320GB, comes in a little under 300 when formatted.  Most of the data on it came from old CDs that I still have somewhere.  One of these days I was going to get around to putting it all on DVDs  to save some room in the media cabinet    with the data on the harddrive now I can go ahead and reformat.  I did run WD diagnostics on it after copying off the data and of course it checks out fine.  If I ever had a hdd utility tell me different I would faint dead away from shock. I have had obviously bad drives that are always just okie dokie as far as mfr utility is concerned.

I think I might split the drive into two partitions.  One NTFS so I can back up stuff from windows and the other ext3.  The first time I formatted it I used the mfr utility to go from NTFS and never understood how it could be one partition in FAT32 (isn't there a 30GB limit? but figured the utility made some magic) I am not likely to trust it further than I can go throw it after this 

[Bald Brick]

The first time I formatted it I used the mfr utility to go from NTFS and never understood how it could be one partition in FAT32 (isn't there a 30GB limit? but figured the utility made some magic) I am not likely to trust it further than I can go throw it after this 

According to Wikipedia a FAT32 partition can be up to 8 terabytes in size -- but there is a footnote:

While FAT32 partitions this large work fine once created, some software won't allow creation of FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB. This includes, notoriously, the Windows XP installation program and the Disk Management console in Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. Use FDISK from a Windows ME Emergency Boot Disk to avoid.

[ruel24]

Could it have simply been a need to reconfigure it under ntfs-3g? Possibly, you rebooted without it hooked up and was no longer seen by ntfs-3g and no longer configured.

[wayne1932]

Adding the line to fstab and rebooting allowed me to access my USB drive.  My USB drive is in a "platinum"series" case that I bought at MicroCenter, and added my own PATA drive.  PCC>hardware>harddisk  identified it as a "cypress" something or the other before I rebooted, now it doesn't say anything. Cypress must be the chipset used.

Now on to more confusing stuff.  I also had a thumbdrive plugged in, which was previously identified as sdc, with my usb hardrive identified as sdd.  After rebooting they are reversed although I can access both of them with either konqi or dolphin  .In spite of my fstab saying my USB harddrive is sdd,, it now shows up in PCC as sdc.  

A year or two back (with KDE3.5.10) I remember that this USB harddrive would act weird, sometimes not showing up at all, until after it had been plugged into an XP machine and accessed.  But this weird  behavior disappeared under KDE4 until now.

I need this hard drive as FAT32, because I haven't been able to convert my wife to PCLOS yet, and her machine is vanilla XP.  So to back up her stuff, it needs FAT32.

I thought that new kernels, hal and udev, had done away with the need for even having fstab.  I'm a complete ignoramus about these things, so much for my thinking        

[wayne1932]

My apologies to Nish for piggybacking his thread.  I know that this might confuse some folks.

[Nish]

Could it have simply been a need to reconfigure it under ntfs-3g? Possibly, you rebooted without it hooked up and was no longer seen by ntfs-3g and no longer configured.

Not sure if you are talking to me or Wayne.  But for me, the drive was purchased almost two years and though it came with NTFS on it I immediately formatted it FAT32 so that I could write to it from linux - I never got into the ntfs-3g thing - shared partitions between XP and linux I always used FAT32. It has been FAT32 the whole time it was used.  And rarely even disconnected from the machine.  For a "removeable" drive it was not removed much at all LOL.  Maybe an interim update changed something?  As long as it was plugged in linux kept it the way it was, but when I disconnected for the move and hooked back up it was no longer correct?

I am only thinking of using NTFS on it now for videos from windows that are too big for FAT32. 

Whatevs. Something went awry somewhere.  It really is behaving itself in windows so hard to swallow a hardware issue but we will see what a formatting with different file systems does for it.

Wayne, you may want to start a thread so that if I mark this one solved or finished you can continue to get assistance on yours.

[wayne1932]

@Nish,   Mark it solved if you want.   I'm good with what I got now.

[Nish]

@Nish,   Mark it solved if you want.   I'm good with what I got now.

Me too, Wayne.  I partitioned it into two primaries and formatted one in NTFS and one in Ext3 with gparted.  Windows found the windows half nicely and works fine.  In linux, I can mount either partition by clicking on them.  Oddly, I could manipulate data on the windows/ntfs partition without changing any permissions.  The linux partition, I went into /media and changed permissions so that I could write to it.  I don't have either partition in my fstab, it wasn't in there before so not sure if I should add it or mess with it anymore with it working fine now.

I won't trust it for backups - just use it as easily accessible storage of things I already have on disks.  There is only about 30 GB of stuff I would consider irreplaceable.  And I am pretty good about having multiple copies of such. Losing other things is very inconvenient but not the end of the world