jdow:
> OK, let's break the problem down into smaller pieces. Do you have a known
> good drive you can test on that adapter? Does it work?
I have four drives that I'm using with the converter, including another 200
GiB Maxtor; all of them are EIDE. Only one of the drives exhibits this
behavior; the others are fine. All drives are ext3.
> When you say you've tried with an EIDE cable how do you know the drive was
> not found? Did you look at dmesg after booting?
Here is the dmesg output when the faulty drive is unplugged from a USB 2.0
input and then plugged into the running box again.
[81041.572000] usb 4-6: USB disconnect, address 16
[81056.170272] usb 4-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 17
[81056.303917] usb 4-6: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[81056.348793] scsi11 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[81056.358481] usb-storage: device found at 17
[81056.358490] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
The output from the operation stops there; no other messages are emitted.
> I guess an obvious question is, "How did you abort the gpartd operation?"
> Pulling power while a drive is writing is "not a good thing."
If I wrote that an aborted gparted was a likely suspect, I misspoke. I meant
to say that I bailed out of a GRUB configuration. It was some time ago that
this possibly unrelated event occured. It is true that neither gparted,
nor parted, nor fdisk can find the drive now while scanning devices.
> And a sense of your urgency to recover the drive might help. Is it a new
> one you'd hate to lose but all you'd lose is the drive or did it have a
> lot of precious data on it that you have to figure out how to recover, now.
> (If it is the latter you are going to have to do some serious learning and
> have the patience of Job.)
We swap out three backup drives. One drive is always off the premises. An
attempt to introduce the wonky drive back into the rotation gave me the first
intimation of trouble. The drive contains no sensitive or irrecoverable
information in its current state; I'd actually like to wipe it. I'm not about
to go at it with Knoppix STD or some other forensic suite.
> In terms of dmesg, set the drive to cable select. Plug it in to the drive
> cable as master (the end connector.) Plug the cable in to either of the
> IDE connectors, such as is free. Boot the machine. Interrupt the boot in
> the BIOS. Usually the first page contains a list of drives. Play with it
> to look for the drive. (Usually it's set to auto for all four possible
> IDE/PATA drives.) If you plugged into the secondary IDE connector check
> down, hold the drive in your hand, power up. You should FEEL the drive
> spin up.)
No matter how the drive is jumpered--cable-select, primary, or slave (in the
last instance, with the drive taking the secondary place on the primary EIDE
ribbon)--the introduction of the drive locks up the computer. The machine
halts just after the memory POST; from there, there's no way to get to the
BIOS screens. It detects a legacy setting for USB storage and recognizes my
precious IBM Model M as a legacy device and then stops cold. It's impossible
to tell whether the BIOS recognizes the drive. There's no way into the BIOS
screens, which are normally available after the POST by <F2>. The boot chain
(at <F12>) is similarly unavailable.
> If the BIOS finds the drive then exit the BIOS setup and proceed to the
> next step. Boot the machine. Then investigate /var/log/dmesg. Look through
> it for references to drives being found. (If need be save a dmesg from
> booting without the drive and one from booting with the drive and compare
> them. The drive should stick out in a diff like a sore thumb.) Note the
> drive's device name, say it is sdc. THAT is what you use with partd
> or fdisk. (fdisk -l /dev/sdc)
The closest I can come to having the drive recognized by the system is through
the USB cage. When I introduce the drive using the Coolmax converter, dmesg
records the messages that I quoted above, in which the drive is recognized as
a USB storage device. However, no userspace program that I've tried sees the
drive, not gparted, not parted.
> If you get that far post the results of the fdisk -l and folks here will
> probably try to help you.
fdisk is similarly uninformative:
root@satyr:~# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00010917
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 304 2441848+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 7650 7776 1020127+ 82 Linux swap /
/dev/sda3 7777 30401 181735312+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 305 7649 58998712+ 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
Disk /dev/sdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0004ee0b
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 12111 97281576 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 12112 19039 55649160 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 19166 24321 41415570 83 Linux
/dev/sdb4 19040 19165 1012095 82 Linux swap /
Partition table entries are not in disk order
Disk /dev/sdc: 61.4 GB, 61492838400 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7476 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000140
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 7476 60050938+ 83 Linux
Thanks for your suggestions. Baring some enlightening ideas from the ML, I
think it's time to drive a couple of 12-penny nails through the casing and
plonk the drive.
Cheers,
JL
--
JL <lists@xxxxxxxx>
In the workers' paradise, there will be dotted quads for everyone!
--
fedora-list mailing list
fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
