Can't write to external hd

[oshunluvr]

Sulfated USB port?
Is there a chemical processing plant in your area that may be releasing sulfuric acid vapors to the air? How about your lungs? Any persistent coughing or breathing problems?

I suspect any old computer in an area with moderate or greater industrial activity would be subject to some level of this type of corrosion. When we lived in Long Beach CA (Los Angeles and Long Beach ports are next to each other and are 2 of the top 4 busiest shipping ports in the US), the soot from tires alone caused issues, not to mention the diesel and gasoline exhaust. I found occasionally "scrubbing" ports (rapidly plugging in and unplugging repeatedly) was enough to restore otherwise sketchy connections on occasion. Cans of compressed air and quarterly vacuuming was mandatory.

Now I expect my environment is closer to yours, Jerry. I live on fresh water vs. salt (the ocean is 40 miles away rather than one block). We have no heavy industry at all. We get 55 inches of annual rainfall. All add up to clean air.

[GreyGeek]

Sulfated USB port?
Is there a chemical processing plant in your area that may be releasing sulfuric acid vapors to the air? How about your lungs? Any persistent coughing or breathing problems?

[oldgeek]

To close off this thread for good, let me report that the technician said the problem was in sulfated usb connection points. He cleaned off the points, but warned me that the case was pretty old and not to expect miracles. He also recommended I use a USB hub (remember those?) connected to the back USB point since that worked well. I have no idea if my kind of computer is still used in the US (I live in Peru), but a sulfated usb point can mess up an external hard drive. I didn't know that, but if anyone had a PC clone in a tower-type case it might be worth your while to clean the damn things.

[oldgeek]

Actually, I'm deducing it was this. I plugged the HD into one of the UDB ports at the back of the computer (a tower-type desktop) and it worked fine, but did not work at all when I plugged it into the front USB ports. I have plugged in some USB drives into these ports, and sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, which is why I suspected the problem was there. In any case, I'm taking the CPU to the shop tomorrow to have them test it out, so I won't have any more information until then.

[vinnywright]

For what it's worth, and if anyone is still reading this thread, the problem was in the USB card, not the configuration or the HD itself. It now works fine.

did anyone say what the problem with the card was ,,,,,and I am assuming you mean a PCI card that plugs in to the mother board as opposed to USB connections built into the mother board .

It's been so long since I'v seen one of those that I did not even think to suspect it ,,,,,,but it would have been a good question to help figure it out,,,"Do other drives plugged into the port work?"

VINNY

[oldgeek]

For what it's worth, and if anyone is still reading this thread, the problem was in the USB card, not the configuration or the HD itself. It now works fine.

[oldgeek]

I've given up. I formatted the HD with Gparted, using ext4 as the file system, and it mounts but will not write anything. I even tried it on Lubuntu, but it responded I have no permission. There must be a physical problem, either with the HD or the USB points on my computer, so I'll have to seek technical help. Thanks to all who have tried to help me, I've learned a lot.

[oldgeek]

Thanks, but that's not really my problem. I can't open the HD in Windows at all. In Linux, I can open it and read it, but not write to it. I'm thinking of re-formatting the HD using Linux, as I don't want it for Windows, but would I be able to do that if I can't write to the disk? If so, how?

[GreyGeek]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mPw4Fn3uCYk


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[oldgeek]

I checked with Windows, and it still will not open the HD. But I did discover that the file system on the HD is marked as RAW, not NTFS. That usually means something is wrong, like unplugging it too early, doesn't it? I may have done that, I don't remember as the computer was acting up, as I wrote before. Should I take this to a technician, or can I do something to correct it?

[oshunluvr]

Well, if you can read what's on it, this would be a good time to copy off everything you can and re-format the drive. Alternately, booting into windows and running chkdsk D: /f should fix it, assuming it's drive D: in windows.

[oldgeek]

Here's what I got when I ran both commands:

steve@steve-desktop:~$ sudo umount -l /dev/sdb1
[sudo] password for steve:
steve@steve-desktop:~$ sudo ntfsfix -d /dev/sdb1
Mounting volume... Incomplete multi-sector transfer: magic: 0x58444e49 size: 4096 usa_ofs: 40 usa_count: 4 data: 61068 usn: 61067: Input/output error
OK
Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
Checking the alternate boot sector... OK
NTFS volume version is 3.1.
NTFS partition /dev/sdb1 was processed successfully.

It does mount when I plug it in, and can read what's on it, and even play a song or a video without any problems. But it seems there are a couple of problems, if I interpreted the output right. In any case, I can live without what's copied onto it, as I have another backup ext HD I write to. And there's nothing from Windows on it, as I rarely use that OS.

[oshunluvr]

Refusing to operate on read-write mounted device /dev/sdb1.

Sure looks like it's mounted somewhere.

sudo umount -l /dev/sdb1

Then try the ntfsfix again. If it still won't work, there's other things to try. It seems possible the file system it damaged, but that doesn't mean the device is dead. It there any data on it you can't live without?

[oldgeek]

I tried the Windows option, but it would not access the HD, saying that its parameters were incorrect.
Here's the output from the second command you sent:

steve@steve-desktop:~$ sudo ntfsfix -d /dev/sdb1
Refusing to operate on read-write mounted device /dev/sdb1.

It must be broken.

[oshunluvr]

You could also try:

sudo ntfsfix -d /dev/sdb1