Ubuntu

Accessing external USB drive

Asked by CharlieArmor

My Ubuntu 8:10 laptop died yesterday and I'm trying to recover the data on it by mounting the hard drive as an external drive on my desktop machine using a device that I hope will allow me to mount the laptop disk as an external USB drive on my desktop machine.

Before I plug in the USB drive I get this output from "sudo fdisk -l":

charlie@shuttle:/mnt$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0001e314

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 23956 192426538+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 23957 24321 2931862+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 23957 24321 2931831 82 Linux swap / Solaris

After I plug in the USB drive I get this:

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0001e314

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 23956 192426538+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 23957 24321 2931862+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 23957 24321 2931831 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: invalid flag 0xe9f3 of partition table 5 will be corrected by w(rite)

Disk /dev/sdb: 71.4 GB, 71436427264 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 8684 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x94aa94aa

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 8406 67518485+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 8406 8685 2241067+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 ? 160866 183378 180829411 d6 Unknown

I've tried to mount sdb (with and without the filetype) and also tried mounting sdb1, 2, and 3

charlie@shuttle:/mnt$ sudo mount /dev/sdb /mnt/usbtemp
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

charlie@shuttle:/mnt$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbtemp
mount: special device /dev/sdb1 does not exist
charlie@shuttle:/mnt$ sudo mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/usbtemp
mount: special device /dev/sdb2 does not exist
charlie@shuttle:/mnt$ sudo mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt/usbtemp
mount: special device /dev/sdb3 does not exist

charlie@shuttle:/mnt$ sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb /mnt/usbtemp
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail or so
charlie@shuttle:/mnt$ sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbtemp
mount: special device /dev/sdb1 does not exist
charlie@shuttle:/mnt$ sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb2 /mnt/usbtemp
mount: special device /dev/sdb2 does not exist
charlie@shuttle:/mnt$ sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb3 /mnt/usbtemp
mount: special device /dev/sdb3 does not exist

I have been studying another bug that seems similar (#36925) and have gathered the following information

charlie@shuttle:/mnt$ dmesg | tail -25

[18875.798166] sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 27 00 00 00
[18875.798171] sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[18875.798900] sdb: unknown partition table
[18877.825429] sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[18877.825969] sd 14:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[20038.339541] usb 5-6: USB disconnect, address 21
[20082.580058] usb 5-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 22
[20082.746790] usb 5-6: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[20082.771461] scsi15 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[20082.778583] usb-storage: device found at 22
[20082.778599] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[20087.776205] usb-storage: device scan complete
[20087.778905] scsi 15:0:0:0: Direct-Access FUJITST LHV2080AH 0000 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[20087.833816] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] 139524272 512-byte hardware sectors (71436 MB)
[20087.839282] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[20087.839293] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 27 00 00 00
[20087.839298] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[20087.842053] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] 139524272 512-byte hardware sectors (71436 MB)
[20087.843943] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[20087.843957] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 27 00 00 00
[20087.843961] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[20087.844768] sdb: unknown partition table
[20089.871325] sd 15:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[20089.872863] sd 15:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[20159.185690] VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev sdb.

I assume my problem is related to the error "unknown partition table" and "Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev sdb"

The disk was the only one on the laptop, which only ran Ubuntu, as a result I had hoped the desktop machine would recognize the disk format and allow me to mount the drive and recover my data.

Because fdisk returns information about the disk I am hopeful that the data on the disk is ok if I can just find out how to mount it, does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you for your time,

Charlie Armor

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midnightflash (midnightflash) said : 		#1

In the terminal please type:
tail -f /var/log/messages

Then plug in the usb-hdd. There you will see if they are ok and so on. Normally the usb-devices should be mounted automatic... or did you turn it off?

Give us the output of the command above please.

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CharlieArmor (charliearmor) said : 		#2

Midnightflash, thank you for your interest.

Below is the output you asked for:

Dec 15 00:49:33 shuttle kernel: [59219.225659] usb 5-6: USB disconnect, address 24
Dec 15 00:50:02 shuttle kernel: [59248.800031] usb 5-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 27
Dec 15 00:50:02 shuttle kernel: [59248.967937] usb 5-6: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Dec 15 00:50:03 shuttle kernel: [59248.996311] scsi17 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Dec 15 00:50:08 shuttle kernel: [59254.002944] scsi 17:0:0:0: Direct-Access FUJITST LHV2080AH 0000 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
Dec 15 00:50:08 shuttle kernel: [59254.034982] sd 17:0:0:0: [sdb] 139524272 512-byte hardware sectors (71436 MB)
Dec 15 00:50:08 shuttle kernel: [59254.037123] sd 17:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Dec 15 00:50:08 shuttle kernel: [59254.043843] sd 17:0:0:0: [sdb] 139524272 512-byte hardware sectors (71436 MB)
Dec 15 00:50:08 shuttle kernel: [59254.045493] sd 17:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Dec 15 00:50:10 shuttle kernel: [59254.046220] sdb: unknown partition table
Dec 15 00:50:10 shuttle kernel: [59256.062851] sd 17:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
Dec 15 00:50:10 shuttle kernel: [59256.063381] sd 17:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0

I've tried running some of the data recovery utilities on the disk and get the impression that there are no partitions present, it is possible that the default install for Ubuntu used the whole disk rather than creating partitions?

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midnightflash (midnightflash) said : 		#3

>> it is possible that the default install for Ubuntu used the whole disk rather than creating partitions?

Yes. If you choose the default while install it looks like yours:
So let's take a look at your fdisk -l:

/dev/sda1 * 1 23956 192426538+ 83 Linux <- your whole System
/dev/sda2 23957 24321 2931862+ 5 Extended <- just the extension to give the possibility to make more than four partitions
/dev/sda5 23957 24321 2931831 82 Linux swap / Solaris <- this is just the swap-space

The laptop-HDD seems to have the same layout... but a bit broken.

Revision history for this message
CharlieArmor (charliearmor) said : 		#4

Any thoughts on why I can't mount the drive?

I've created an image of the disk using ddrescue:

"sudo ddrescue -r 3 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbtemp/image logfile"

but so far have had no success recovering any data from the image.

Revision history for this message
CharlieArmor (charliearmor) said : 		#5

Correction, when I ran ddrescue on sdb1 I got the following error

charlie@shuttle:/mnt/usbtemp$ sudo ddrescue -r 3 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbtemp/image logfile
ddrescue: cannot open input file: No such file or directory

In fact I ran it on sdb, which seemed to complete with no erros although I've been unable to recover data from the resulting image.

Revision history for this message
CharlieArmor (charliearmor) said : 		#6

Correction, when I ran ddrescue on sdb1 I got the following error

charlie@shuttle:/mnt/usbtemp$ sudo ddrescue -r 3 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbtemp/image logfile
ddrescue: cannot open input file: No such file or directory

In fact I ran it on sdb, which seemed to complete with no errors although I've been unable to recover data from the resulting image.

Revision history for this message
midnightflash (midnightflash) said : 		#7

Seems to be a substantial problem with that hdd. :-/

How/what did "die" with that laptop? "Only" the HDD? Did it fell down? Got it burned? Is the mainboard or the CPU broken?

Revision history for this message
CharlieArmor (charliearmor) said : 		#8

I have not yet had a chance to take it to anyone for diagnosis/repair. The laptop ws unfortunately left on overnight, the next morning it appeared totally dead, with no response at all when I tried to turn it on.

The only thing I've tried is changing the fuse on the AC/DC adapter, which is about the extent of my hardware expertise.

If the laptop was worth saving I would have got a specialist to repair it but the screen is very temperamental (needs a new inverter) and the battery only lasts about 30 minutes so I'd been meaning to replace it for a while. All my work data is backed up to another machine but unfortunately my wife's account was not and that's where the last year's family photos are :(

Can you help with this problem?

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