unable to mount seagate st300003u2 usb drive

[gregguk]

Ubuntu 9.04 will not mount or recognise my external usb drive. Unable to find drivers or solution.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/nautilus
Package: nautilus 1:2.26.2-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: nautilus
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686

[Kurt Wall (kwall)]

What is the output of "dmesg" after you plug-in, attach, or turn on the external USB drive? Is it recognized if the system boots with the drive on and attached? Is the USB port to which it is attached working? What brand of USB drive is it?

[Kurt Wall (kwall)]

Marking Incomplete pending additional information.

[apinunt (apinunt)]

I have 3 computers now running 9.04, an IBM Thinkpad, a Compaq Presario A900, and an HP Desktop. Previously, running Ubuntu 7.10, and 8.10 I was able to make use of my external USB hard drives on each of these systems. I have 10 external drives, all formatted NTFS, with sizes of (1) 30GB, (1) 60GB, (2) 250GB, (3) 320GB, and (3) 500GB. None of the drives will mount under 9.04, and I see nothing obvious in dmesg, nothing in /etc or /media when I attempt to mount any of them. A friend who has 9.04 installed on his Compaq notebook came by and found he too could not mount any of the drives. Memory sticks (Kingston) and a no name brand mount with no problems. I also attempted to look at the drives using System-Administration-Partition Editor, which does not see the drives initially or even after running refresh several times. Booting with the Live GParted CD I was able to see one of the drives, so I tried formatting it as an ext3 file system, and then booting 9.04 found it still would not mount. I retried this 6 times with IRC help on line to assure I was doing everything correctly, still with no success. Finally I used the Live GParted CD to reformat the drive to NTFS, and rebooted the system after which I found the drive would mount as /dev/sdf1 with an entry in /media/New Volume on the system so I copied about 45GB of files to the drive and then unmounted it. I then plugged the drive into one of the other systems and it mounted as /dev/sdc1 and /media/New Volume, and then unmounted the drive and set it aside. The following day I tried to mount the drive once again, and found it would not mount on any of the systems with no indication why as previously. Googling, I found others having mount problems and tried their solutions, power the drive up first, then plug it in, plug it in first and then power on, have the drive ready prior to booting the system, etc. but nothing helped.

I'm totally lost as to what the solution is for this problem, and have tried everything I can think of, different power blocks, different USB cables, different drives, different file system. The only thing which has remained constant is the OS on each of the 4 computers I attempted to mount the drives. Could this possibly be an Ubuntu 9.04 problem? And if so, where might I find information which could be helpful in resolving it?

[apinunt (apinunt)]

Further googling for help, I ran across a post which related to a problem similar to mine, and it stated that a patch was required in /etc/modules adding usb_storage to be able to mount an external drive.
Checking my /etc/modules I found it to contain loop and lp, but no usb_storage. Thinking perhaps this was what was missing from previous installs of Ubuntu which worked properly, I contacted a friend who was still running Ubuntu 7.04 and also used external USB drives. Looking at his copy of /etc/modules, he found it to contain fuse and lp, but not usb_storage. Just for kicks, I added usb_storage to one of my computers /etc/modules and found I could then mount one of my external drives. I added it to my other computers and found I could then mount the drive on each of them.
I don't consider this a fix, but simply a get around, as it should be unnecessary to require users to modify a system file for something as common as mounting an external drive. I have yet to try formatting another drive with ext3 and see if it will then mount externally, but I know of another friend who has an external drive formatted with ext3 and will first contact him to ask what the content of /etc/modules is on his system first.
AFAIK, this is most definitely an Ubuntu 9.04 bug which should be remedied quickly and correctly. I am still uncertain if this is the correct way external drives should be mounted, although it appears to work, and since ubuntu 7.04 lacked this, I'm worried that other problems may arise from this change.

[apinunt (apinunt)]

Update:
Last night I thought I had found a way to get around the problem mounting USB hard drives, and went one step further. I took one of my 500GB drives and formatted it ext3. I then found it would mount on each of my 3 systems, but only if it was plugged in prior to powering on. That was acceptable, although not how things used to work.
This morning I got up and thought I would move some files to the newly formatted 500GB ext3 drive, but found it would not mount on any of my systems. Below is dmesg output from this system: (Looking in /dev there is no entry for sdc or sdc1, nothing in /media, and GParted doesn't display the drive even if refreshed numerous times) To make matters even much worse, the ntfs drive which I was able to mount and unmount numerous times last night and had copied a number of files to, now will no longer mount on any of my systems, and displays nothing at all in dmesg when I try.
 PLEASE NOTE: I'm running 9.04 stable, NOT an alpha or beta.

[1135875.468051] usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
[1135875.603425] usb 1-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[1135875.606019] scsi7 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[1135875.606718] usb-storage: device found at 5
[1135875.606721] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[1135880.604314] usb-storage: device scan complete
[1135880.605039] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access WDC WD32 WD-WCAPD1522393 0M21 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 CCS
[1135880.652685] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] 625142448 512-byte hardware sectors: (320 GB/298 GiB)
[1135880.653395] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[1135880.653399] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 00 38 00 00
[1135880.653401] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[1135880.654598] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] 625142448 512-byte hardware sectors: (320 GB/298 GiB)
[1135880.655423] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[1135880.655427] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 00 38 00 00
[1135880.655429] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[1135880.655434] sdc: sdc1
[1135880.666429] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk
[1135880.666497] sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[1138953.329570] usb 1-3: USB disconnect, address 5
[1139041.576047] usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
[1139046.925369] usb 1-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[1139046.927294] scsi8 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[1139046.928364] usb-storage: device found at 6
[1139046.928367] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[1139051.928221] usb-storage: device scan complete
[1139051.931948] scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access WDC WD50 00AAKS-00A7B0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[1139051.969067] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] 976773168 512-byte hardware sectors: (500 GB/465 GiB)
[1139051.971306] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[1139051.971310] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 38 00 00 00
[1139051.971312] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[1139051.976568] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] 976773168 512-byte hardware sectors: (500 GB/465 GiB)
[1139051.978803] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[1139051.978806] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 38 00 00 00
[1139051.978808] sd 8:0:...

[apinunt (apinunt)]

Should I be posting elsewhere about this problem? Or how should I proceed as I am uncertain as to what further info I should provide, if any, and still uncertain if the problem is something that requires knowledge I'm expected to have requiring some system modifications normally provided by a user. This is a problem that didn't exist prior to installing Ubuntu 9.04, and has pretty much put a halt to getting any work done. If there is more information I need to provide, or if I'm posting in the wrong location, please enlighten me and I will do whatever is necessary to allow progress to begin.

[apinunt (apinunt)]

New finding:

Based on a friends Ubuntu 7.04 content of /etc/modules containing fuse, which I have no idea what it pertains to, I added that entry also to my Ubuntu 9.04 /etc/modules and found that my ntfs external drive would then mount. I unmounted, unplugged the drive and plugged it back in and it mounted several times in a row. I then tried to mount my 500GB ext3 drive and found it would not mount at all. I tried with the drive powered up both before and after plugging it in and even tried booting the system with the drive connected and could not get it to mount, nor could I find anywhere an error message or indication the system had any knowledge at all of the drives existence.

I've never before had an external drive using an ext3 file system so this may be normal for previous versions of ubuntu as well as the 9.04 version, so I will probably try to find a way to reformat the drive to ntfs in hopes that a solution for that file system can be found.

Can someone confirm that /etc/modules is a place where I should be making changes, and if the changes I'm making are correct, and why must I, a user have to make edits in this area of the system to begin with?

[apinunt (apinunt)]

Sorry for so many posts, but this is a very important problem for me.

After trying and failing to mount an ext3 usb drive, my ntfs drive would no longer mount, and I found the following lines added to dmesg:

[ 127.632045] usb 1-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[ 127.744043] usb 1-5: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 127.960052] hub 1-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 5

I then shut the system down, and rebooted without the drive connected, and powered up the drive and plugged it in and it still would not mount, but dmesg did not show any messages explaining why.

Is it possible I'm looking in the wrong place for a solution? Could there be a problem in ehci_hcd? I don't know what that is but it showed up in dmesg.

[apinunt (apinunt)]

This will be my final post in this thread if no response occurs as it appears to be dead.
I contacted a friend who is running Ubuntu 9.04 and has an ext3 external drive which he is able to mount when needed with no problems on his Compaq notebook. Looking at /etc/modules on his system he has 3 entries, loop, lp, and sbp2. I don't know if sbp2 might be helpful or not, and would prefer to wait and see if someone can verify if this should be on my system before further corrupting any system files.

If any others will post against this bug report, I will be glad to provide any info I can that might be helpful, but will refrain from further posting otherwise as I am just shooting in the dark.

[Kurt Wall (kwall)]

apinunt, this bug is far from dead. I triage bugs on a volunteer basis as I have time evenings after work. As you suggest in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/377297/comments/4, this appears to be specific to Ubuntu 9.04, specifically the usb-storage module (as you write in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/377297/comments/5). https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/377297/comments/6 further suggests that external USB drives /can/ be made to work using the workaround you described.

My opinion is that adding usb-storage to /etc/modules is an effective, if unfortunately necessary, workaround. As the issue appears specific to usb-storage and libusb, I have assigned this bug to the libusb-1.0 module. I'm sorry I can't be of more assistance to you, but lacking an external hard drive, I am not able to attempt to reproduce this bug.

Regards,

Kurt

[apinunt (apinunt)]

Thanks for the reply, I was wondering if this thread was dead.
The so called "fix" I applied, doesn't seem to work any longer, and I have 3 different computers, and 10 external drives, one now using ext3, the rest still ntfs, to play with. If you or anyone would like to use me as a means of gathering info, I am retired, and have plenty of time to try various things and provide the output results, if that would be of any help moving this along. All I would ask is that I be given instructions on how to undo things if they go wrong.
Looking in Synaptic, I see an installed package for libusb, but find nothing for usb-storage.
Also googling, I found another site which recommended executing modprobe -r ehci_hcd as a way to get usb drive to mount. I haven't tried that as I don't know how to restore back to normal if that wouldn't work. I couldn't find a package with that name in synaptic either.
Anyway, if I can be of any help please let me know.
Thanks

[apinunt (apinunt)]

I have been experimenting some more, and seem to have one 500GB drive formatted ext3 which looks like it mounts, as I can see an entry in /media/.hal-mtab and a directory created /media/wd500gbA, which is the drives label name, but no icon appears on the Desktop. Memory sticks always mount with an icon, and looking at the properties of the memory stick I find the owner to be the user name who mounted it. The hard disk always shows root as the owner, could that be why it doesn't bring up an icon on the Desktop? If so, is that a bug?

[richardm (richardj-moore)]

This is interesting. I had a very similar experience with a reconditioned 80GB Segate ST900815A. In desperation I put it into a Windows 2K system and tried to call up FDISK. It wouldn't let me create partiton, but did keep prompting me to allow it to write a signature. Eventually I conceded. After that Linux would accept the drive in a USB caddy. I don't know what signature got written by Windows. I tried zapping the 55AA in the MBR to see if I could bring the problem back, but that didn't stop the drive from coming on-line. I've just zeroed the entire drive and still the drive comes on line.

One other thing my Linux system is RH RHEL5, so this is not specifically an Ubuntu problem.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

I am closing this bug since there has been no response from the original submitter. Note also that mounting USB drives do not involve libusb (which is a user-space library for communicating with USB devices). Please file new reports against the "linux" package if you experience issues using the latest version of Ubuntu.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]