Computer won't find external harddrives

First time I boot up opensuse it found my external harddrives without problem but now it won’t and I have no idea why. Anyone with an idea? Since I’m realy new on openseus I would be thankfull for fast and realy simple answers.

Best regards…

Fast you might get; simple may be a little more difficult. I’ll try :wink:

I only possess one external drive, and it’s NTFS. I seem to recall we have wrestled with that here on the forum already, so you can search for the answers on that. They are not simple, and there are limitations, but it can be done.

If they are something like FAT32 (old Windows standard), we can work this out in steps. Your question indicates to me you aren’t highly experienced, at least in using a Linux forum, because it’s hard to proceed without more information from you.

Tell us about the external drives. Tell us if the system reacts in any noticeable manner when you plug in any of them. If not, open a “terminal” window (look in the menu) and type the command “dmesg”, which displays in list form a log of what the system does internally. Take a look at what appears at the end, right after you plug in the drive. More than likely it will include lines with “ehci_hcd” and “usb” (assuming the drives use the USB plug).

Paste those lines in your next post.

Thans for helping me!

The last line after plugging in the hd is:

“usb-storage: device scan complete”

Just when i plug the drive in the disk starts to spin but nothing happens on the screen. The drives (plural) works on my other windows computers. The drives are 2 FAT32 drives and 1 NTFS drive.

It can well be that the drives are hidden somewhere where I can’t find them and that only the first time you plug them in the show up at the desktop?

Many thanks for helping me out!

It’s possible they are added automatically, since the installer saw them the first time. In my experience, KDE will notify you in some way with a popup window. GNOME will simply show the drive on the desktop with an icon.

Next trick: In the terminal window, run this command

less /etc/mtab

When I plug in a memory stick, I see this at the bottom:

/dev/sda1 /media/disk ext2 rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0

To parse this, you simply have to understand:

  • the disk is considered by Linux to be, in effect, a SCSI device ("/dev/sda1")
  • mounted in the file system at “/media/disk”
  • is formatted for Linux (ext2)

The rest is details about who can do what with it. Tell me what you see on one of the FAT32 drives.

It is GNOME that I use.

What I see after inputing your comando is this:

“/dev/sda2 / ext3 rw,acl,user_xattr 0 0
proc /proc proc rw 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw 0 0
udev /dev tmpfs rw 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
/dev/sda3 /home ext3 rw,acl,user_xattr 0 0
fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw 0 0
securityfs /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw 0 0
none /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw 0 0
/etc/mtab lines 1-10/10 (END)”

I could not understand anything of that so I hope you can…

Big thankyou for all the quick answers!

sigh The system is not mounting it. All those “sda” entries indicate your internal harddrive is read as a SCSI drive, and there is nothing mounted in the “/media” folder on the system.

So in the first trick, we learned the system does see a USB drive, but the second trick shows it is not being mounted automatically (as far as I can tell).

Let’s go back to the first trick, running “dmesg”. Let’s go through the drill of unplugging the drive, then plugging it back in and run “dmesg” in the terminal window a few seconds later. This time, I want you to show me the last 20 lines or so, starting with something like the first “usb” stuff and down to the end where it says “device scan complete”.

I’ll have to leave the house for awhile, so my next reply may not be so snappy.

Theres nothing snappy about your answers at all. I had to take care of my and my sisters pary so we timed it well. Still thankfull for your help and it seems like this time we maybe got something more usefull from the terminal:

“usb 7-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
usb 7-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi8 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb 7-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1058, idProduct=1001
usb 7-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 7-1: Product: External HDD
usb 7-1: Manufacturer: Western Digital
usb 7-1: SerialNumber: 574D41535931313331313935
usb-storage: device found at 6
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access WD 5000AAK External 1.05 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] 976773168 512-byte hardware sectors (500108 MB)
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 21 00 00 00
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] 976773168 512-byte hardware sectors (500108 MB)
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 21 00 00 00
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: sdb1
sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
sd 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete
SFW2-OUT-ERROR IN= OUT=wlan0 SRC=192.168.2.114 DST=130.57.4.24 LEN=40 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=29098 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=27085 DPT=80 WINDOW=283 RES=0x00 ACK FIN URGP=0
SFW2-INext-DROP-DEFLT-INV IN=wlan0 OUT= MAC=00:13:e8:fa:9f:2f:00:30:f1:fb:78:8c:08:00 SRC=130.57.4.24 DST=192.168.2.114 LEN=40 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=33 ID=29098 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=80 DPT=27085 WINDOW=283 RES=0x00 ACK RST URGP=0”

What do you think?

Thankfull regards…

Hi again

I think this may be linked to my problem:

[gnome] “Nautilus cannot handle Computer: locations” - Page 3 - Ubuntu Forums](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=801597&page=3)
and:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/233889

I have the exact same problem as them to; can’t get to neither my computer nor my trash bin. So I’m now going to reinstall opensuse with something else than GNOME since I’m not capable of installing the update they are talking about in those posts. I’ll be back in half an hour whit my report.

Take care until then…

I have now reinstaled opensuse with KDE 4.0 instead of GNOME and evrything seems to work. I can get to both my computer and my trash bin. And for now I can also get to my external hard drives. I don’t know what will happen when I restart my computer but untill than. Big thankyou for your most kind help.

Best regards / Autonym

Glad to read its working for you.

Did you ever figure out what caused it to stop working?

One word of caution, I recommend you limit your software repositories to only 4 repositories (repos): OSS, Non-OSS, Update and Packman. If you add others you could end up replacing stable packages with unstable packages, and unpredictable effects could occur. Its best IMHO only to add another repos for a specific app that you know to be necessary, … and then remove the repos after installing the specific app. At least that is the philosophy that I follow.

Also, for future reference, when trying to obtain more information as to why one’s external drives may not be visible, some commands I find useful are:

  • to determine what partitions/drives are mounted in simple terms: df -h
  • to determine what partitions/drives openSUSE mounts per a config file: cat /etc/fstab
    *] to determine what partitions/drives openSUSE can actually see (per the partition id type): su -c ‘fdisk -l’ (but possibly not mounted)

I was away from my system for quite awhile after that last one, and I’m glad you found your own path. At any give time, GNOME or KDE can develop such bugs, and then whomever packages them (SUSE, Ubuntu, etc.) can introduce their own bugs. Still, the things you learn on your own tend to be remembered longer.

I agree with oldcpu about keeping your repositories few. You’ll really need what Packman does, but beyond that is dangerous territory.

The problem is back so I’m thinking of finding a permanent solution to this problem. Regarding repositories I almost don’t even know what those are so I don’t think I will be able to instal to many.

I’ll write the response to the comands oldcpu suggested:

“Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 20G 2.9G 16G 16% /
udev 1002M 96K 1002M 1% /dev
/dev/sda3 89G 246M 84G 1% /home
/dev/sdb1 466G 151G 316G 33% /media/My Book”

“/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Hitachi_HTS7220071108DP1C10DJG7LGHP-part1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Hitachi_HTS7220071108DP1C10DJG7LGHP-part2 / ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Hitachi_HTS7220071108DP1C10DJG7LGHP-part3 /home ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 2
proc /proc proc defaults 00
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 00
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 00
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 00
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 00”

"Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd29ad29a

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 262 2104483+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 263 2873 20972857+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 2874 14593 94140900 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x44fdfe06

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 60801 488384001 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)"

Best regards…

Okay, so the external drive is ‘/dev/sdb1’ and it’s mounted at ‘/media/My Book’.

If you open your file browser (usually the icon is a little house), and in the left pane click on “Storage Media” you should see a little plus sign. Click on that to open the display of the various disks and there should be one which says “My Book” or someting similar.

This is realy wierd but while you have been helping me I’ve also been folowing a couple of guides on the net and now I can get my videos and my music from both FAT32 and NTFS to work. It’s a great feeling and I’m realy gratefull for your help. I’ll write as soon as (or if) I encounter the problem again. Untill then; thankyou realy much!

Smart move to research it on your own. We prefer the old “teach a man to fish” versus “give him a fish.” The objective is that you stand on your own, and pass on to others what you learn from experience.

Haha… Couldn’t have done it without you. I’m trying to work out a last problem with the disks in another thread and then it’s fully working. Thank you very much.

Its possible you set them up, not knowing what they are, … possibly via the one-click-install.

In essence, applications for openSUSE are typically packaged as binary/executeable files together with their libraries and some config files, packaged all together in one file, with the “.rpm” extension. This “.rpm” file can be easily installed with minimal effort, as opposed trying to compile a file from source, using the source code, which requires a lot of effort.

However often to get a “.rpm” file to install properly, one often must install other “.rpm” files first. This is “oldhat” and reasonably easy for experienced Linux users, but it can be a nightmare for new Linux users.

Typically these .rpm files are stored on file servers that are connected to the internet. These file servers are typically called “repositories” (or “repos” for short).

Now to make the installation of your applications (which are packaged as “.rpm” files) easier, special applications known as “software package managers” were created, which one uses to install the .rpm files. But one must tell the “software package managers” where to look to find the files, … ie one must tell the “software package mangers” which repositories (files servers with .rpm files) to look for. OpenSUSE comes with “zypper” and the software package manager front end to zypper integrated into “yast”.

So you need to tell zypper/yast where to look on the internet for the .rpm files.

That is what I mean by “setup your repositories”.

Setting up your repositories makes software installation INCREDIBLY easy.

I recommend ONLY OSS Non-OSS, Update and Packman. No others until you know what the risks might be. There is guidance for doing that here: Repositories - openSUSE-Community Select your openSUSE version and follow the guidance. If you have more than just OSS Non-OSS, Update and Packman selected, I recommend you disable those others (if any), until you understand why they are needed (the odds are very high they are not needed).

It might be useful for you to brush up on your openSUSE linux basic concepts. I recommend you read this URL: Concepts - openSUSE

I have to admit that there still some problems that I can’t fix on my own. When I try to download a file to on of my external harddrives Ktorrent sais:

“Cannot create /media/My Book/Tracker/Torrent/Torrent.nfo: No such file or directory”

And when I try to open some files opensuse sais:

“The file or folder /media/mybook/folder does not exist”

Untill this problems are fixed I can’t use my external harddrives. I know you have been realy helpfull to me so I hope you can help me with this to. Thankyou very much for all the help I’ve got.

Best regards…

Hi
Linux is case sensitive and may/may not like spaces. So if you look at
your post, is it /media/My Book or /media/mybook they are completely
different locations?

For example;


mkdir My Book
cd My Book/
pwd
/home/malcolml/My

It created two separate directories...

rmdir My
rmdir Book

mkdir "My Book"
cd My Book
bash: cd: My: No such file or directory

cd "My Book"
pwd
/home/malcolml/My Book


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.0 x86 Kernel 2.6.25.16-0.1-default
up 3:26, 1 user, load average: 0.62, 0.78, 0.42
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 173.14.12

Do you have more than one external hard drive? When you ran the commands I suggested, your partition ID information suggested your hard drive is formatted as FAT32. You should be able to copy to that external drive with no problem.

However I note you made reference to NTFS in another post in this thread. Writing to NTFS can be problematic on openSUSE, as there was a change from the old NTFS driver to the newer NTFS-3G driver, and the quirks of the change still have not been sorted by SuSE-GmbH. There is a web page here that provides detailed guidance: NTFS - openSUSE

If your experience noted above (with the quoted errors) was with an NTFS formatted drive, then this could be your problem.

If you are using openSUSE-10.3 or 11.0, as a workaround, you can simply create a simbolic link which should solve a problem in writing to NTFS formatted external drives. Simply (with your external hard drive not connected) open a konsole or gnome terminal and copy and paste (one line at a time):
cd /sbin
su -c ‘ln -s mount.ntfs-3g mount.ntfs’ #enter root password when prompted.

Then plug in your external hard drive.