USB external hard drive disconnecting
Rick Stevens
rstevens at internap.com
Tue Feb 5 17:53:27 UTC 2008
On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 11:48 -0600, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> Reid Rivenburgh wrote:
> > Hi. I bought an external USB hard drive last week and reformatted it
> > as ext3. I can mount it and read/write files, but for some reason it
> > periodically disconnects and reconnects. I would like to use it as
> > permanent storage, hooked up to my computer all the time. I added a
> > label to it and put a line in fstab to mount it. But I'm getting
> > lines like these in my /var/log/messages:
> >
> > Feb 5 00:07:05 pigpen kernel: usb 1-7: USB disconnect, address 4
> > Feb 5 00:07:06 pigpen kernel: scsi 2:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to dead device
> > Feb 5 00:07:06 pigpen kernel: EXT3-fs error (device sdd1):
> > ext3_find_entry: reading directory #2 offset 0
> > Feb 5 00:07:06 pigpen kernel: scsi 2:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to dead device
> > (and more...)
> >
> > It's then quickly found again, though assigned sde1 in this case and
> > of course not automatically mounted. I'm assuming the filesystem also
> > requires an e2fsck because it was disconnected.
> >
> Because it is mounted ext3, it may recover all by itself, but
> running e2fsck on it will not hurt.
>
> > Does anyone know what might be causing this? Is it likely a hardware
> > issue? I have another external drive that I've been using without
> > problems for about a year, but it's firewire. Previously, I was using
> > both drives with autofs, but the new drive had some problems with that
> > approach, too. (Now that I've learned about filesystem labels, that
> > seems like the way to go anyway.)
> >
> > I'm running F8 with all updates (kernel-2.6.23.14-107.fc8).
> >
> > Thanks,
> > reid
> >
> Does this drive have its own power supply, or is it powered off the
> USB bus? Have you noticed anything happening about the same time it
> has problems? (Moving the drive, the machine suspending, etc?)
>
> The first thing I would do is check the USB cable to the drive to
> make sure it is plugged in all the way on both ends, and is not a
> defective cable. If moving the cable causes problems, that is a good
> indication of a cable problem. If it has its own power supply, check
> that connection as well. Also, check that the supply is not getting
> too hot.
If it's plugged into a USB hub, check that as well.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer rstevens at internap.com -
- CDN Systems, Internap, Inc. http://www.internap.com -
- -
- Denial. It ain't just a river in Egypt anymore! -
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