USB Pen Drive Crisis

Ug · #1 6th March 2004, 07:29 PM

My USB Pen drive, has given up the ghost or so it appears. I get the following error when i try to mount it:

Code:

mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device

It appears that a block on the device has become corrupted and this is preventing me from mounting it.

Does anyone know anyway, in which I can rescue this device? By finding the bad blocks on it and repairing them?

djf_jeff · #2 6th March 2004, 08:35 PM

I have see some usb device that have no partition (so it's directly on sda and not sda1). Another case is that you have something mount as sda and you pen drive become sdb1...

Check the /var/log/message to see where your pen drive is link

mhelios · #3 7th March 2004, 02:39 AM

Have you checked it with:

Code:

fsck /dev/sda1

Also run:

Code:

fdisk -l /dev/sda

to check that it's being detected.

Ug · #4 7th March 2004, 09:01 AM

When I fsck it I get:

Code:

[root@localhost gareth]# /sbin/fsck /dev/sda1
fsck 1.34 (25-Jul-2003)
e2fsck 1.34 (25-Jul-2003)
fsck.ext2: No such device or address while trying to open /dev/sda1
Possibly non-existent or swap device?

And i get nothing when i Fdisk it.

Avatraxiom · #5 14th March 2004, 07:20 AM

Are you certain it's mounting at sda? If you have any SCSI (or, I think, any ide-scsi...), you might want to try /dev/sdb.

Was it working on sda before?

-M

Ug · #6 14th March 2004, 09:04 AM

Definately working on SDA before. I'd never had a problem with it.

Avatraxiom · #7 14th March 2004, 09:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ug
Definately working on SDA before. I'd never had a problem with it.

Then it's probably given up the ghost. At work, I usually test these things by plugging them into different O/Ses in the test lab (where I have five computers that each run six different O/Ses on different partitions) and see if they start magically working. If they don't, they're usually dead meat.

If you don't have that capability, it's probably not too risky to toss it in the garbage. You do have to watch out for it exploding suddenly into flames when it touches the trash-can liner, though. ;-)

I think that new pen drives aren't too 'spensive nowadays. Of course, when one is a student, McDonald's can be expensive. (I almost said "Taco Bell," since they're even cheaper, but I'm not sure you have them over there...)

-M

Ug · #8 15th March 2004, 07:38 AM

I've never seen a Taco Bell except on an American TV program.

But yea i've tried it on Windows too, and it was fooked then too.

Avatraxiom · #9 15th March 2004, 07:46 AM

Sounds like the fookage is complete, then.

Ug · #10 15th March 2004, 07:58 AM

Damn.

sigusr · #11 25th March 2004, 03:11 PM

Have yoy tried "fdisk -l" without other options? If the device has been bumped up the scsi chain this will locate it.

I also have a pendrive problem. Hope you can help. I am a linux newby. I can only write to my pendrive from the root account. Automount works in other accounts with read only access. "chmod" will not work from root account console. I hope the following info helps.

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 31 MB, 31981568 bytes
4 heads, 32 sectors/track, 488 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 128 * 512 = 65536 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 487 31152 4 FAT16 <32M

contents of fstab

/dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive auto auto,user,rw 0 0

# ls -l
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 16384 Mar 24 11:44 usbdrive

[ root]# chmod 777 /mnt/usbdrive
chmod: changing permissions of `/mnt/usbdrive' (requested: 0777, actual: 0755): Operation not permitted
[ root]#

I hope this helps you and thanks in advance for your help.

Ug · #12 25th March 2004, 07:28 PM

No the problem with mine, is a bad block.

Darkmage · #13 30th March 2004, 06:25 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ug
My USB Pen drive, has given up the ghost or so it appears. I get the following error when i try to mount it:

Code:

mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device

It appears that a block on the device has become corrupted and this is preventing me from mounting it.

Does anyone know anyway, in which I can rescue this device? By finding the bad blocks on it and repairing them?

Here is a solution /dev/sda1

You need two modules in the kernel
scsi disk support and usb mass storage support

Ug · #14 30th March 2004, 06:41 AM

It used to work, so thats not the solution i'm afraid. The problem is it used to work, but now it's corrupted and dosen't.

Darkmage · #15 30th March 2004, 07:43 PM

I had the same problem till I enabled scsi disk support in the kernel modules and it worked fine afterwards.
Are you running a custom kernel?