Software :: Mounting USB Hard Disks With Partition Table Error
Mar 3, 2011
This was a really frustrating problem which turned out to have a really simple solution, so I'll share it with people who might be having the same struggle. Problem You plug in a usb hard disk and try and mount it using:
[code]....
I spent hours - days - hunting around for the solution! (And felt a bit humiliated when I realised how simple it was!) PS, There used to be a "Success story" section on LQ, but I couldn't find it; if this is better in another section, please move it. PPS, I'm on a public computer and won't have Linux access for a looong time - if anyone can copy the message that fdisk prints out to help people who are searching for it
i used to have ubuntu 9.i decided to move to sabayon so i used the live cd to install it ,resize the ubuntu partition and use the remaining space for sabayon.while the resizing procedure i got an error(i dont have a copy of the error log file but i know it has something to do with an anaconda process).i aborted the installation and the result was an filesystem that couldnt be mounted.when i try to mount the hdd i get this:
Code: Error mounting: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so and this is what i get from fsck: Code: $ sudo fsck -f /dev/sdb1 code....
Is there a difference between using GPT partition table when formating hard drives and MS-DOS partition table? What are the advantages/disadvantages of using either?
When I start gparted, to see if I can add extra harddisk where all my data is, I get the next error:
Code: [root# gparted libparted : 1.9.0
The kernel was unable to re-read the partition table on /dev/sda (Device or resource busy). This means Linux won't know anything about the modifications you made until you reboot. You should reboot your computer before doing anything with /dev/sda. I can start fedora 12 x64 amd whitout any problem. My partition layout on a single disk (80 gb sata maxtor) for the system is: Code: / /home swap
When I try to mount one of the extra disks (samsung spinpoint 1 tb, I have 4) I get to next error: Code: root# mount /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 mount: you must specify the filesystem type
If I add the option with the filesystem I get: Code: root# mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 mount: special device /dev/sdb1 does not exist
In gparted, when I select just a flag option, and deselect, press ok, the disk is forced to be reread by the program. After that I can also mount it. When I use any of the programs linked in this post, I am able to mount the disks whitout any problem. Except after a reboot, I get the same problem. SO whit each reboot, or poweroff, I need to do a re-read of the disks. The system is fedora 12 x64 for amd, installed from a live cd, the rest whit yums groupinstall, the latest kernel.
I'm not sure how to do this. I checked the hard drive preferences and looked through the forums... I don't want to manually mount my hard drives(s) every time I boot up just to access my music and wallpapers.
Coming from Fedora, I had a Web/Mail/SQL server with 2 hdd's. One (sda1) was the one with Fedora on, and all backups were on sdb1.
Now, I started having issues with SDA1, so I started copying files to SDB1. 2 weeks later I noticed similar issues, and started copying new back files to SDB1. But once I started doing this I lost connection with the server.
Turns out that (in rescue mode) that I couldn't access SDA anymore, it couldn't even read stored data on it, etc. It didn't show up in fdisk anymore either.
So after a lot of trying I asked to replace the disk and started installing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on it. After having installed everything, I tried to restore one of the MySQL backups that was on the SDB disk, but halfway I started getting errors. I stopped the restore and did some other stuff that I wanted to take care of first (apache2 config etc.).
I then tried to reboot to be sure that that was working as well, and then the problems started. I couldn't access the server anymore, and in rescue mode (which is a live cd my host provides, it's a dedicated server btw.) I didn't see SDB anymore.
I told them this and now after they told me that they managed to get it back, I went into the rescue mode and tried to recover bad blocks with the e2fsck command.
Code:
Trying to restore this bad superblock doesn't work. I've tried for almost all of them:
Code:
e2fsck: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sdb1
Could this be a zero-length partition?
What are the chances of TWO hard disks failing? Surely there must be something else wrong? Did a bad driver (which would be weird, since I didn't do any updates like that) screw both of my hard disks up in Fedora?
Also, I must note that when I tried to copy the backups from SDB1 to SDA1 (the new one). I got a read only (??) error, and some other I/O errors.
Just for information, I'll show fstab and mtab as well: /etc/fstab
Code:
Code:
I haven't added the sdb here yet, but it was here in Fedora so that can't be the problem.
And this is /var/log/messages when the problems emerged
Code:
Then on the ubuntu forum they proposed me to do this:
I was installing opensuse 11.2 in parallel with windows xp.but during installation suddenly power has gone and after that opensuse is giving me the error message corrupt partition.i am also not able to login in xp. so I decide to reinstall windows, I got the error saying "invalid partition table" after the first restart of windows xp installation.
I tried to use windows system recovery console and committing fixmbr and fixboot commands, but didn't work. i have 2 window partition(1 for windows and 1 for data).i do,nt want to format 2,nd partition.
How can I installed windows?My plan was first to install windows xp, then opensuse again.
GParted tells me my hard drive is not partitioned and has an unrecognised partition table, but I know it has because i'm using it now to write this on here, and fdisk shows the following:
Quote:
Anyone know of anyreason GParted may not be working or can offer an alternative to create a partition?
Caused by Used fdisk to delete the windows partition, in my dual boot. Then I could no longer log in to ubuntu, the partition table was some how courpt and I couldnt remount I then decided to use the windows partitioner from windows setup, as I thought it is so stupid, to reformat the partition where I had ubuntu. I wanted reinstall ubuntu, and I know that during the setup I could straighten out the mess I'd made.
Windows has now installed two 8mb one cylinder partitions on my HD. When I start the PC I get a !disk error occurred Press Crlt Alt Del to restart! This happens everytime. HD boot sequence is buggered, i guess.
I can boot from other devices. USB + CD. How when I use the windows disk to boot up I can see the 2 8mb partition, which it wont let me delete. How can I delete this via linux?
Also when I try to install ubuntu from the usb drive, it stalls just after the Preparing to install part. The next screen is when you set the partition table, swap drive etc. When I quit I get the following error !Process Glib WARNING getpuuid_r() failed due to unknown id!
The usb_liveCD does however mount my hard disk partitions and luckily I have managed to back everything up to an external.
results from df /var/log# df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on aufs 766804 68140 698664 9% / none 760892 244 760648 1% /dev /dev/sdb1 3911856 712128 3199728 19% /cdrom
I am having a difficult time trying to get my old hard drive mounted to my new server. Let me give you some background on what I am doing.
I used to have my main desktop setup as a backup server for my main server hosted at a data center. It would run periodic backups of the database and files on the server, well I ended up upgrading that desktop to be used as my main gaming computer. I just disconnected the hard drive and installed a new operating system on a new hard drive. I then ordered a Dell SC1425 1U server; I got CentOS 5.5 (Same as my old server) installed on it, and I took my old hard drive and placed it in an external enclosure (USB) and connected it to my new server. I ended up having to run some commands to change the LVM name to something different, since they were both "VolGroup00". After successfully changing the old drive to "VolGroup01" I connected the USB drive back to the server but only the "Boot" partition is being mounted. I can't seem to mount the other partition.
Code: df -T Filesystem Type 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 ext3 73514160 3351180 66368448 5% / /dev/sda1 ext3 101086 12173 83694 13% /boot code....
I installed Ubuntu as shown in the wiki and when I went to restart it gave me a lovely blinking cursor and nothing else. So I held down option, loaded into osx, reinstalled rEFIt and got my menu on startup. Unfortunately, the partition sync tool doesn't seam to be working, it gives me an error: Status: MBR partition table is invalid, partitions overlap. Error: Not Found returned from gptsync.efi
I installed openSUSE on a XP runnng computer and every thing is OK.When I tried to Install a new XP, I got this error:Code:Invalid Partition Table I fixed it by reinstalling GRUB using Rescue System.I tried fix mbr on XP Repair System and I got that error again.Now I want to keep XP and remove openSUSE. But computer only boots by GRUB and XP's boot loader is unable to boot and shows that error
I have 2 hard drives on mu box 1st one is 500.0 MB ext4 Volume where I have my syste FC 13 and a 2nd one where I put my database files as follows 78.1 GB ext4 Volume usage = filesystem, format ext4
ih file browser, I can see an icon for a 80GB hard drive but whenever I double click I get the following
Quote:
Error mounting volume: An error occured while performing an operation on data Partition 1 of ATA Maxtor <: <the operation failed
clicking details
Quote:
Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 1: helper failed with: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error
when I type
Quote:
dmesg | tail
I get
Quote:
# dmesg | tail [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Allocating FIFO number 3 [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: nouveau_channel_alloc: initialised FIFO 3 [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Allocating FIFO number 4
What is very strange is that mysql works fine.In disk utility, it indicates that disk is healthy, but when I click check file system i get
File system check on "data" (Partition 1 of ATA MAXTOR STM380215A) completed File system is NOT clean
Just installed Slackware 13 this morning. It's been a long time since I last tried Linux, but Slack works (a lot easier than Slack 8 did back when I last used it!) quite well. I'm using the XFCE desktop and it's smooth as silk except for one odd problem-I cannot get any of my USB drives to mount. I just plugged in my Lexar 4GB USB flash drive and received an error message. Here's from /var/log/messages from when I initally plugged in the drive (I have a 500GB WD MyBook USB external drive that is always plugged in):
Any ideas or suggestions of what to look at? I'm not familiar with HAL in Linux although I've seen plenty of discussion about it and have an idea of what it's supposed to (or break! ).
i decided to try archlinux in my pc a while ago so i installed it... after three months i started to miss slackware so i decided to reinstall it but i wanted to save my /home partition so when i installed slackware i left my /home partition from arch hoping that i could just mount it on slackware...but now when i try to mount that /home partition this is what i get:
bash-3.1# mount /dev/sda4 mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda4,missing codepage or helper program,or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so code....
So i dont really know what is going on here but i hope somebody could help me because i really NEED to get the data from that partition.
oh and by the way i installed slackware on ext4 partitions and the /home partition from arch is ext3 so i dont know if that's maybe the problem o_O?
I've installed debian squeezy recently and for some reason I have problems with mounting /home partition during startup.
There's an error:Mounting local filesystems...mount: special device /dev/mapper/isw_bbfedcffgi_Volume0p6 does not exist. failed
I've tried using fsck - no result the file system is healthy, I've tried formatting it once again (fresh copy, no user data) and it's not working. What is more mounting the partition manually goes well - I can read the data and write to it. All other partitions are ok.
I have no idea what's going on and why mounting /home fails. I've written this post on Polish debian users forum, but no response - only to give more info, so I'll put it here also:
ls -al /dev/mapper
crw------- 1 root root 10, 59 Nov 9 19:34 control lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Nov 9 19:34 isw_bbfedcffgi_Volume0 -> ../dm-0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Nov 9 19:34 isw_bbfedcffgi_Volume01 -> ../dm-2 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Nov 9 19:34 isw_bbfedcffgi_Volume05 -> ../dm-3 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Nov 9 19:34 isw_bbfedcffgi_Volume06 -> ../dm-4 code....
I have two internal harddisk. Harddisk 1 has ubuntu, fedora installed and harddisk 2 has ubuntu installed. I normally connect either one, and use it. How can i always keep connect both harddisks, and at the start, select from which harddisk to boot? Or it's not possible?
Ubuntu 10.04 has just failed to load from my hard drive, so I've resorted to booting from CD just to get the machine going.I'm wondering if my main boot drive has gone caput??When trying to mount it using DISK UTILITY...get the message: Error mounting volume
Error mounting: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,missing codepage or helper program, or other error.In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so
I'm having a problem with my usb disks, on opensuse 11.2. USB disks only mount the first time after booting.
The scenario is, I boot, then I plug a usb disk. It mounts properly and I can use it. After I unmount it and unplug the disk, I try to plug it in and it doesn't mount. And none of my other usb disks will mount as well.
The only workaround is to reboot.
I checked /var/log/messages, and the disk is being detected, it's just not being mounted.
I am trying to give another user the ability to mount any hard disk by using either the Places menu or the Palimpsest disk utility. Currently whenever you try to do either of these, it immediately asks for root password, even though the logged in user has sudo priveliges to mount disks.
I have modified the sudoers file and given them access to STORAGE and other needed commands. The account CAN mount using the mount command in terminal, but I want to allow them GUI use. From my reseach it looks like Fedora is using DeviceKit but I'm not too familiar with how it works. What do I need to allow non-root users to mount disks in the GUI?
In Ubuntu Lucid 10.04, when I click a disk in the left panel of Nautilus for the first time, the disks are getting mounted without asking a root password. This was not in the case for the previous versions of Ubuntu. how can I turn this feature on in Lucid.
I want my usb disks to automount in /media as usual, but I don't want the internal partitions to be mounted there. The internal partitions are my business, and I'd like to install it ONLY where I want. I can disable the automount, but then the usb disks will not mount.
I have tried to automate the configuration of a usb drive with not much success.
The problem that I have is that I have a large amount of usb drives that have a partition table of type "loop" and I need to change them to "msdos". The size of the drives vary and I need to use FAT32 or FAT16 file system.
I've tried various partitioning commands and gui applications but cant find one that I can give a one line command to to set the partition table, maximum partition size and file system.
I was reading another thread about someone with a bad partition table and I decided to join this forum. I'm not going to take any drastic actions with the partition (/dev/sda3) in question. I am going to wait for instructions on what to do first. I am not very good with Linux and need some hand holding. System: DELL 4550 Dual-Booted with XP and Ubuntu. Works OK, just no swap. Well, here's what I did: I deleted a partition for Windows XP Pro because it was a trial, and it ran out. I then decided to slide the swap partition for the Ubuntu Linux that I dual-boot into over. (If this was successful, I was going to try expanding the root partition to take up the unused space.) I used Gparted on a CD to do this, as I figured it was safe to do.
I now cannot mount the swap space at bootup (and have to go into a backup version of the OS), although I can use Gparted in Linux to execute the "swapon" command, and it appears that it worked because I now see "swapoff" as an option on the context menu. (I actually don't even need a swap partition, except to hibernate.) If I highlight the swap partition and click on "Drive" on Gparted's menu bar and select "Create Partition Table", it will erase all data on /dev/sda, so how do I fix the bad partition table non-destructively?
Everything is installed and setup on my system, but when I setup my partitions I chose my Windows partition to be bootable. Can I just use cfdisk to toggle the bootable flag so my linux partition is bootable and rewrite the partition table?
I'm using Ubuntu 9.10 and previously had a separate partition with another distro on it. I decided to delete the other distro's home and swap partitions and install XP in place of it. I've been following these instructions: [URL] and [URL] I have gotten to the point where I am booting to the XP CD and want to install it, but I get the message, "Setup did not find any hard disks installed on your computer" when I should be getting to the screen that asks me to select a partition to install XP on. This is what my HDD looks like in GParted:
I want to install XP in the unallocated partition, but I have a feeling I screwed up somewhere along the way and probably don't fully understand the whole thing. Even if I try to format the unallocated partition to NTFS I can't make it a primary partition (I assume because it's within sda2). The very last thing I want to do is delete my Ubuntu partition and start from scratch, but if that's my last option let me know.
We purchased a virtual server from GoDaddy (1 month trial) to set up as a proxy for our networks (24 of them). I am having 2 separate issues. The first is I can't configure/install NAT and support is telling me the only way I can is to purchase a dedicated server. Here's the error:
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 3128 iptables v1.3.5: can't initialize iptables table `nat': Table does not exist (do you need to insmod?) Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded. Here's the fix: [URL] So, what I am hoping to do is configure this by just opening port 3128 directly, and only allowing access from our networks. As a test I did this and allowed only from our office and it did not work. However I can't connect, so I am wondering what I am doing wrong? Here's my squid configuration:
I want to change my sda2 partition to ntfs type. i have installed GParted but it is returning a strange type of error. Here is the error dump file...
[Code]...
WARNING: the kernel failed to re-read the partition table on /dev/sda (Device or resource busy). As a result, it may not reflect all of your changes until after reboot. WARNING: the kernel failed to re-read the partition table on /dev/sda (Device or resource busy). As a result, it may not reflect all of your changes until after reboot.
