Re: Problems with External USB Hard Drive

Allen Winter wrote:

Howdy,

I just got a new 160GB external USB Hard drive from Maxtor (the "One Touch").
At first it seemed to work for me without any trouble.  I copied 10GB or so onto it and things look ok.
But a few hours later the drive was unmounted.
There is one big Linux partition with an ext3 filesystem on the drive.  The drive is plugged into a 4-port
Kensington USB hub.

The first sign of trouble I see are these messages from /var/log/messages:
Sep 20 20:01:06 kernel: updfstab: Using deprecated /dev/sg mechanism instead of SG_IO on the actual device
Sep 20 20:01:06 kernel: kudzu: Using deprecated /dev/sg mechanism insteadof SG_IO on the actual device

Later, these messages show up in /var/log/messages when the drive unmounts:
Sep 20 22:02:30  kernel: usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, address 4
Sep 20 22:09:04 kernel: scsi0 (0:0): rejecting I/O to dead device
Sep 20 22:09:04  kernel: EXT3-fs error (device sda1): ext3_find_entry: reading directory #2 offset 0
Sep 20 22:09:04 kernel: Aborting journal on device sda1.
Sep 20 22:09:04 kernel: scsi0 (0:0): rejecting I/O to dead device
Sep 20 22:09:04 kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 530
Sep 20 22:09:04 kernel: lost page write due to I/O error on sda1
Sep 20 22:09:04 kernel: scsi0 (0:0): rejecting I/O to dead device
Sep 20 22:09:04 kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 0
Sep 20 22:09:04 kernel: lost page write due to I/O error on sda1
Sep 20 22:10:08 kernel: scsi0 (0:0): rejecting I/O to dead device
Sep 20 22:10:08 kernel: EXT3-fs error (device sda1): ext3_find_entry: reading directory #2 offset 0
Sep 20 22:10:08 kernel: scsi0 (0:0): rejecting I/O to dead device
Sep 20 22:10:08 kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 0
Sep 20 22:10:08 kernel: lost page write due to I/O error on sda1
Sep 20 22:10:08 kernel: ext3_abort called.
Sep 20 22:10:08 kernel: EXT3-fs abort (device sda1): ext3_journal_start: Detected aborted journal

Any idea how I can fix this?  After a reboot the drive works again for a little while before unmounting.
I have an FC2 system running the stock 2.6.8-1.521 kernel.

Help! Appreciated,
Allen

I have the same problem reading flash cards with a SanDisk ImageMate 6in1 reader. The same hardware works just fine on my notebook running the same kernel. I've had USB problems off and on with this P4S5A mainboard since upgrading to FC2. There were several kernels that locked up solid if I pressed the sync button on my palm pilot.

I'm curious if yours was an upgrade from FC1 or a fresh install. The system I have problems with was upgraded, while the other was installed clean.

Bill