Unable to mount 1TB USB external HDD - Error

Question

I'm getting an error when I plug in my 1TB USB external HDD, the weird thing about this is that it was working fine before and I've been using it for about a couple of months now. yesterday I compressed one of the folders which had about 120GB of data but the compression failed after an hour and I decided to unmount the drive and shut everything down.

Today when I tried to plug in the drive I got the following error:

Error mounting: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdc, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so

output of cat /proc/partitions below

muzikayise@muzikayise-supercom:~$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdc

Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x39dcba64

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

please will someone kindly assist with this?

thanks in advance,

muzi 20110203: Ok i had a look and as Jet suggested the partition table is messed up, not sure how that happened. have a look at this below partition details:

muzikayise@muzikayise-supercom:~$ sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sdc > PT.txt
muzikayise@muzikayise-supercom:~$ cat PT.txt
# partition table of /dev/sdc
unit: sectors

/dev/sdc1 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0
/dev/sdc2 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0
/dev/sdc3 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0
/dev/sdc4 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0

i'm gonna try fix this, not sure how yet but will google for solutions

Answer 1

cat /etc/fsta and look for /dev/sdb1 , /dev/sdb2 etc

If these lines exist you need to comment or remove them. then remount the drives.

You might be forcing a non-standard file system upon your HDD.

Answer 2

Ok Partition Table was the problem with the drive. i used this link http://hubpages.com/hub/Repair-Partition-Table which guided me on how to go about repairing the partition table.

So i added Gparted as suggested in article above, and i used Ubuntu Software Center to locate and install it.

after installing i opened up Gparted and it confirmed that my /dev/sdc was unpartitioned, so i created a new partition using Gparted, i thought it would "somehow" save my data but i was wrong therefore lost all my data. anyway most of the stuff was junk anyway but atleast my 1TB drive is working again YEAH :)

thanks again to the guys who provided feedback to me regarding this issue.

my fixed drive looks like this now:

 muzikayise@muzikayise-supercom:~$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdc
 Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
 Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
 I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes    
 Disk identifier: 0x39dcba64

    Device Boot        Start      End       Blocks     Id      System
    /dev/sdc1            1       121602     976760832  83       Linux

best always, muzi

Answer 3

For me it looks like there is no partition on the harddrive. Have you already created some on the hardrive? Because normally it should look like this:

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Platte /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GByte, 1000204886016 Byte  
255 Köpfe, 63 Sektoren/Spur, 121601 Zylinder  
Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 × 512 = 8225280 Bytes  
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes  
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes  
Disk identifier: 0x444c544e

   Gerät  boot.     Anfang        Ende     Blöcke   Id  System    
/dev/sdb1               1       77664   623836048+   7  HPFS/NTFS  
/dev/sdb2          115910      121601    45720990    f  W95 Erw. (LBA)  
/dev/sdb3           77665      103161   204804652+   b  W95 FAT32  
/dev/sdb4          103162      115909   102398310   83  Linux  
/dev/sdb5          115910      120163    34170223+  83  Linux  
/dev/sdb6          120164      121601    11550703+  83  Linux  

I know it is in german, but the last part with /dev/sdb1, dev/sdb2 etc. is missing.