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Old 27th November 2010
guitarscn guitarscn is offline
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Default External HDD error messages - drive failing?

Recently whenever I use my external USB hard drive on OpenBSD, I've been getting messages like "Input/Output error" whenever I copy files from it to my laptop. Also when I tried to mount it I get the error "No medium found" and "Device busy" or something like that. The drive is formatted in OpenBSD partition. Does this mean the drive is failing and I should back it up ASAP?
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Old 27th November 2010
guitarscn guitarscn is offline
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Also when I try to newfs:

# newfs sd1a
Device busy

When I unplug it and re-plug it back into the USB port, it no longer sees the drive. In dmesg it doesn't show sd1 as being plugged in when usually it shows as being unplugged then plugged back in. I have to reboot to plug it in again.
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Old 27th November 2010
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by guitarscn View Post
Code:
# newfs sd1a
Device busy
Is the drive still mounted? If sd1a is still in the output of df(1) before issuing the newfs(8) command, this would explain the "device busy" message. newfs(8) will neither work, nor should it, on drives which are already mounted.
Quote:
When I unplug it and re-plug it back into the USB port, it no longer sees the drive.
Again, is the drive still mounted? Check the output of df(1).

Although USB devices can be attached & reattached at will, storage devices still have to be manually mounted/unmounted unless you have set up amd(8). Given the direction of discussion, I tend to doubt you have this in place.
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Old 27th November 2010
guitarscn guitarscn is offline
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No the drive is not mounted, because I cannot mount it. Like I said, when I reboot, plug in my drive, and try to "sudo mount /dev/sd1a /mnt/ext1/" I get a device busy error. df does not show the drive.
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Old 27th November 2010
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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The firmware won't attach as a USB device if the internal ATA device is experiencing errors, usually.

However it is possible that the enclosure is having it's own problems, you might want to open it up and look for possible loose cables, maybe installing it locally in a machine and checking if any errors show up.

You might also want to attempt using it on another OS, if you happen to have any, as it could be a problem with OpenBSD's USB stack.. check out a snapshot as well.

Also, had newfs of succeeded.. your partition would have been wiped it out, you realize this, right?
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Old 27th November 2010
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When you plug the device in, your dmesg will get a few lines added to it. Your console will get blue/white kernel messages. Your /var/log/messages will have them too.

Read them. You might discover the device is sd2 instead of sd1. But until you take the time to see what device is actually attached, or not attached and why, all we can do is make conjecture.

Once you have confirmed you have a correctly attached device, you may then attempt to inspect it with fdisk(8) and disklabel(8).
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Old 27th November 2010
wimwauters wimwauters is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jggimi View Post
When you plug the device in, your dmesg will get a few lines added to it. Your console will get blue/white kernel messages. Your /var/log/messages will have them too.

Read them. You might discover the device is sd2 instead of sd1. But until you take the time to see what device is actually attached, or not attached and why, all we can do is make conjecture.
This is the very reason I tend to run xconsole on my desktop:
when I plug in a USB printer or storage device, I can see what the /dev/ entry is and if the connection is reliable (I had a dodgy/damaged USB port which kept disconnecting/connecting).
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Old 27th November 2010
guitarscn guitarscn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jggimi View Post
When you plug the device in, your dmesg will get a few lines added to it. Your console will get blue/white kernel messages. Your /var/log/messages will have them too.

Read them. You might discover the device is sd2 instead of sd1. But until you take the time to see what device is actually attached, or not attached and why, all we can do is make conjecture.

Once you have confirmed you have a correctly attached device, you may then attempt to inspect it with fdisk(8) and disklabel(8).
The funny thing is my dmesg does not get lines added to it. A diff between my regular dmesg and a dmesg after I plug it in results in no differences. My console usually gets text with white text and blue background when I plug in an external hard drive, but this particular drive does not give me any sort of that message at all.
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Old 28th November 2010
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From your description, and only your description, you do not have an electronic connection to your USB device.

Confirm this by watching the console, using tail(1) with /var/log/messages, or xconsole(8).

Did you forget a power cord? Some external USB drives need external power, or 2 USB connections to draw sufficient power.

If it isn't power, then you may have a failiure of USB in the external drive, cabling, port, or internal to your workstation.
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Old 28th November 2010
guitarscn guitarscn is offline
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It's been working fine until yesterday for some unknown reason. I use it to listen to music mostly and it started going haywire even though I (don't think I did) made any changes to it.
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Old 28th November 2010
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Lots of possibilities:

Unplugged power cord
Unplugged 2nd USB connector
External device power switched off
Missed message in /var/log/messages
USB disabled in BIOS
Failed electronics in external device
Failed electronics in workstation
Bad connector either end
Bad cable

Choose one or more.
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