[Linux-disciples] sda1 is not a valid block device

[Adam Rosi-Kessel]

On Thu, Sep 01, 2005 at 07:46:20PM -0400, Brian Cooke wrote:
> This morning, I started seeing this line repeated over and over again in 
> my kernel log file:
> 
> Sep  1 05:19:15 experienced kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sda1, 
> logical block ########
> Sep  1 05:19:15 experienced kernel: lost page write due to I/O error on sda1
> 
> sda1 is a usb hard drive of mine (ext3fs).  When I try to mount it now, 
> it simply says "mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device"
> 
> Is my hard drive dead?  Or is just the file system corrupt?  I suspect 
> the former, but I would like to confirm.  How can I find out?

Ooooh. Sounds bad.

I don't really know anything about external USB hard drives. But could
start by seeing if the partition table is there -- cfdisk /dev/sda.

Also try an e2fsck, but I doubt that will work. (e2fsck /dev/sda1).

I'd also be interested if you can do a raw read off of the disk -- try,
e.g., dd if=/dev/sda of=some_file bs=1024 count=1024 (that will read the
first megabyte of raw data off of sda and put it into some_file).

Were there any other changes that occurred right before this? E.g., new
kernel. You might try, just for the heck of it, booting from a knoppix CD
and see if you can see the drive any better. (I doubt it, but it's worth
a try.)

Those are some ideas to start.
-- 
Adam Rosi-Kessel
http://adam.rosi-kessel.org
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