Need some help with a harddrive mounting issue.
Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Need some help with a harddrive mounting issue.
started by: Cammo
Posted by Cammo on Mar. 20 2006,02:10
Hi. I've been off and on using DSL for a long time now. I originally got it just to try out linux... then had it installed on an old computer, got frustrated, uninstalled... repeat a few times :P I've also done a from scratch Debian installation a few times on the old one. I've gotten the hang of a lot of stuff in Linux all on my own, and I'm proud to say this is the first post I've ever had to make on any linux forum!Anyways, I've taken lately to using DSL on my main XP rig, because it just runs SO much better than my aging XP install. I've got a pretty sweet setup going now. I boot it off the CD (latest DSL version) with the toram option, and as well I have my backup files and .DSL's on my USB stick. It boots successfully into an XFCE4 desktop environment
I've learned so much over time and tweaked it just the way I like it. Love the quick startup and program opening times, beats XP any day. I was proud today too, I successfully made a .DSL of GNU Backgammon off of apt-get!!
Anyways, on to my problem. This happened with older versions of DSL as well, but does not occur on my older computer. It also does not occur with a Knoppix boot disc. Basically, during bootup, I notice a bunch of insmod errors relating to the creation of /etc/fstab. There's also an error message relating to my harddrive partition. When I get into linux, I try to mount my HDA1 (one harddrive on this computer, one partition, and it shows up in the list.) It gives the error:
"wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,
or too many mounted file systems"
This is a killer for me. I want to drop my permanent home on my harddrive so that it won't destroy my usb key anymore :P Also, all my music and stuff is on my HD. Now, my harddrive IS fat32, so I know the NTFS thing can't be the problem.
Please, please, please help my mount my harddrive!!
Thanks for being such a great community and I look forward to the replies.
Posted by Cammo on Mar. 20 2006,20:04
Just wanted to add that I found an old Knoppix disk kicking around. The livecd was able to detect and mount my harddrive perfectly fine.
Posted by anaconda on Mar. 20 2006,21:31
Have you tried mounting it manually?open a terminal and get root rigths
| Code Sample |
| sudo su |
then try manual mounting.
| Code Sample |
| mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 |
that should do the trick.
now you should find your hda1 in /mnt/hda1 (maybe it would be a good idea to check that the directory exist before mounting... yes it does.. should..)
If that didn't help read on:
you wrote:
| Quote |
| Basically, during bootup, I notice a bunch of insmod errors relating to the creation of /etc/fstab |
I have had similar errors with partitions that weren't formatted (which propably isn't the problem now)
AND with disks that have a corrupted partition table! !
to check this open a terminal and get root rights
| Code Sample |
| sudo su |
then write:
| Code Sample |
| sfdisk -l /dev/hda |
prints the current partition table.
it should have 1 line / partition, telling the starting and ending cylinders of each partition.
Some windows partitioning programs can sometimes write the partition table full of BS, which windows sometimes miraculously understands.. how? beats me! DSL doesn't read corrupted partition tables as well.
< http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki....endrive >
From the above link you can find some instructions of how to repair corrupted partitiontable (just DONT change the number of cyls/heads/sectors of your hard drive!! it would stop working), but if you know what you are doin you could fix the partition table.
Or you could do the "sfdisk -l /dev/hda" command and post the output of that command here.
And I could look if there is anything wrong with it..
_
anaconda
Posted by anaconda on Mar. 20 2006,21:36
And with my corrupted partition table:both knoppix and windows could still read the drive (in my case a USB-stick, but the partition table is the same in USB-stick and hard-disk..)
but the partition table was full of BS, which distracted DSL..
After repartitioning it has worked perfectly
Posted by Cammo on Mar. 20 2006,21:45
Thanks for the reply!Manual mounting didn't work. That geometry thing sounds kinda right though... knoppix was fine but 3 different DSL's I had didn't work at all.
my sfdisk -l /dev/hda looks like this:
Disk /dev/hda: 7476 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0
Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 0+ 7475 7476- 60050938+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hda3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
Not sure what it all means.
Could you elaborate further on the process of fixing it, if it IS the partition table? Because I have my and my family's whole computer life on 30 gigs and I cannot afford to mess it up in any way. (No backup methods either.)
By the way, I managed to catch the errors. They occured when creating Fstab, and said modules xfs.o, minix.o, efs.o and hfs.o could not be found (or something along those lines.)
Thanks again!
Posted by anaconda on Mar. 21 2006,08:13
Hmmm..That partition table seems to be OK!
If it would have been corrupted like what I meant. It would have looked something like this:
(Windows and knoppix still understood this!!??)
Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 ? 15078801+ 16439200- 1360400- 84344761 69 Unknown
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,1,62) found (68,13,10)
end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,1,62) found (288,115,43)
/dev/sda2 ? 13721931+ 28801620- 15079690- 934940732+ 73 Unknown
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,1,62) found (371,114,37)
end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,1,62) found (366,32,33)
/dev/sda3 ? 20+ 20- 0 0 74 Unknown
/dev/sda4 0 27702527 27702528 1717556736 0 Empty
start: (c,h,s) expected (0,0,1) found (0,0,0)
end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,1,62) found (0,0,0)
interesting problem.. Obiviously DSL can see that there is a hda (sfdisk sees hda), but still not able to mount..
Sorry I haven't got more ideas..
_
anaconda
Posted by doobit on Mar. 21 2006,14:18
| Quote (Cammo @ Mar. 20 2006,16:45) |
| Thanks for the reply! Manual mounting didn't work. That geometry thing sounds kinda right though... knoppix was fine but 3 different DSL's I had didn't work at all. By the way, I managed to catch the errors. They occured when creating Fstab, and said modules xfs.o, minix.o, efs.o and hfs.o could not be found (or something along those lines.) Thanks again! |
Those look like file system drivers to read macintosh file systems, like when you use an emulator. Are you using the embedded version of DSL?
Posted by Cammo on Mar. 21 2006,17:05
Nope! Just booting off of a Live CD. I also remembered that I didn't actually use windows to format it waaaay back in the day, I used the maxtor software that came with my drive. So that would explain why the partition table is OK.
Seems like an anomaly of a problem, hopefully someone can come up with a solution!
Posted by anaconda on Mar. 22 2006,13:25
Well. one soulution could be:I have read from somewhere, that there is a filemanager for linux, which doesn't need the drives to be mounted. Instead it accesses the /dev/hda1 etc. directly.
But can't remember which filemanager it is
What I DO remember is that puppylinux has that filemanager...
Posted by Cammo on Mar. 22 2006,17:11
Good idea!I found it, it's called Mtools (and MToolsFm). I set it up with the c: as /dev/hda1 ... and it tells me c: cannot be initialized.
I wonder why DSL hates my harddrive!
(Thanks for the ideas though...)
Posted by 300c_pilot on Mar. 23 2006,18:00
Try using: mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mntIf it is reporting as SDA1 then you try to mount as HDA1 the os does not know where it is. SATA & SCSI drives can come up as SDA, also if your drive is not on the primary IDE controller, I have had it report as SDA1.
Hope it helps.
Posted by Cammo on Mar. 24 2006,03:21
Hmm, thanks for the reply. However, my HD is my only HD, and it's on primary IDE1 kinda thing... as well, my USB key is being picked up as SDA1.
Posted by 300c_pilot on Mar. 24 2006,06:55
They where idea's, thats all. I made the mistake of not reading the whole post. I ran into difficulty if the drives jumpers are set for cable select. I had trouble with speed of accessing the drive. But I could mount them. Maybe?
Also is it possible that the maxtor format wrote the partition table to the first partition and not the boot record? Western Digitals disk utils does this and it causes great frustration when trying to install additional OS's.
Smooth flights...
Posted by Cammo on Mar. 24 2006,15:57
Sorry if I came off as angry or anything, believe me I appreciate any replies and ideas I can get I can't remember how I hooked up the harddrive, it was so long ago... I think I used the Master/Slave system as opposed to cable select.
That partition table thing makes sense (if I knew better what it meant lol). Because when it scans it tells me it can't find a valid fat filesystem (but it DOES find the partition.) Like the output of Dmesg or whatever it is, hda1 always shows up but its like it can't identify if its Fat, Ext2, etc. What does it mean exactly if it wrote it to the first thing and not the boot record? How would I tell/fix it?
Btw, I think I used the same utility to format my olda drives in compy 350mhz, (although I might have partitioned them with another proggy but I don't think so) and they show up fine. As well, Knoppix can read my drive (maybe it has a less picky utility or something?) It all seems very weird to me.
Posted by 300c_pilot on Mar. 25 2006,07:30
First, what ever you deside to do, you need to get a backup of your drive before it ends up getting messed up.Try booting the machine into the bios, if the geometery in the bios is the same as the actual drive (heads, sectors, etc.) then the partition is most likely written to the master boot record.
If it is different then it is written to the first partition, on the drive. Basically the machine boots up to a small partition, that then calls a translation program that allows you to see the rest of the drive. This was a huge problem back when there was an 8gig & then 30 gig barriers that had to be overcome. The software was the only way to use the new larger capacity drives.
The MBR is a hidden area at the begining of your hard drive that an OS is not allowed to write to normally. Its main purpose is for storing the geomitry of the drive. For instance a 1.54 meg floppy disk is really about 1.7 megs the additional space is used by to os and normally not accessable by a user.
When the partition table is written to the c: drive it allows the OS to access it, the same as any file and it can cause grave problems for the inexperienced. Corruption is a very likely thing. Because this really means there are two actual partition tables, failure of ether one can cause complete loss of all the data on the drive.
If all of this fails then go to the store and get an IDE to USB adapter and mount it that way. After you back it up.
Good Luck...