Re: Old laptop HD to pick up with usb adaptor
- From: Spinner <invalid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:08:10 -0000
On Wed, 06 Feb 2008 15:40:03 -0500, tinkering wrote:
I bought this cheap usb/HD adaptor cable to back up partitions from a
laptop 30gb PATA. Never used usb before except for camera image
transfers. When I plug this cable with the HD on it into the known
usable usb port nothing shows up. Not auto, not manual. I try to mount
different combos of /dev/sda1,2,3, but nothing.
Do such drives have to be usb-drives?
Not in my experience, and I've used a *lot* of USB cables and drives.
Here's how I troubleshoot USB drives:
We want to know what Linux does the first time it encounters the
device in a session, so if you've been playing around with it you need
to reboot first. Then log in and wait a few minutes for all devices to
be recognized and everything to settle down.
Open a terminal.
Run "sudo dmesg -c". That'll display dmesg, then clear it which is
what we really want.
Plug the device in and give it about 30 seconds for the HD to spin
up and be recognized.
Now run "dmesg" and it'll show what's changed. If nothing shows then
wait another 30 seconds and try dmesg again. If you're still not
getting anything then you can pretty well figure Linux isn't seeing
the device at all. Otherwise, dmesg usually provides enough
information to tell you where the problem is.
Some common USB-drive problems you may run into:
Problem 1: Unless you're using an external supply for the hard drive, it's
possible that the HD may be drawing more power than the USB connection
can supply. It depends on the USB chipset but dmesg will often show a
warning about excessive power being drawn. Otherwise, I'd look closely
for bent pins and drive jumpers in the wrong place.
Problem 2: If dmesg isn't reporting anything and you *know* the drive
and USB/IDE adapter are good, then I've *heard* often that this
sometimes works:
(Plug the device in, wait about 30 seconds.)
sudo rmmod ohci_hcd
sudo rmmod ehci_hcd
sudo modprobe ehci_hcd
sudo modprobe ohci_hcd
This disables the USB1 and USB2 drivers, then reinstalls the USB2
driver BEFORE the USB1 driver. This also sometimes works if a USB2
adapter is transferring at USB1 speeds.
Problem 3: If the drive is working but you're getting agonizingly slow
transfer speeds, the USB2 adapter is probably being misdetected as a
USB1 device. To fix that, run the following BEFORE you plug the drive
in:
sudo rmmod ohci_hcd
sudo rmmod ehci_hcd
sudo modprobe ehci_hcd
(Now plug the device in)
This disables USB1 and forces all USB devices to be recognized and
treated as USB2. If you don't have any USB1 devices then you can just
leave things like that. If you need to run USB1 devices while using
the USB2 drive, you can, AFTER your USB2 drive has been picked up, run
"sudo modprobe ohci_hcd" to reinstall the USB1 drivers. But, if you
remove the drive and plug it back in, it may (or may not) be seen as a
USB1 device again.
Rebooting will restore settings to normal, so you have to do this
again the next time you use the drive. You can make the change
permanent by blacklisting ohci_hcd, but then no USB1 devices will
work.
Problem 4: If you're plugging in an unformatted drive then it's not
going to auto-mount until you format it. You have to watch it here
because as soon as you start to format the drive, Ubuntu tries to
automount it. The automount fails because the drive isn't fully
prepared yet, and then the format fails because something tried to use
the drive while it was being formatted. Both programs display error
messages that don't explain the problem. The solution is to disable
automounting before you start to format the USB drive:
System->Preferences->Removable Drives and Media
Untick everything under "Removable Storage"
You can re-enable automounting after the drive is formatted. Give it
about 30 seconds and see it it automounts by itself. If not then
unplug it, wait 15 seconds, and plug it back in.
.
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