HELP: External 250G USB screwed with GParted

[André Costa]

Hi,

I hope someone can help me out of this one...

I plugged my brand new WD Passport Drive
[http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=364] on my F8
box, and it appeared just fine (I had done this before -- I had even
reformatted the partition with NTFS with Windows XP). I wanted to
remove the single 250G NTFS partition and create two smaller ones, and
reformat them as ext3 and HFS for my girlfriend's MacBook.

GParted identified the device just fine, and I had just deleted the
original partition and created two smaller ones (110G and 120G),
unformatted. When I hit the "apply changes" button, GParted told me it
could not see the device anymore. Indeed, it couldn't be seen
anywhere. The disk was not mounted anymore, and did not appear as a
device on GNOME's nautilus.

Here's what's on /var/log/messages, showing what was going on right
before it all went to hell:

Jan 19 12:19:37 localhost kernel: usb 2-3: new high speed USB device
using ehci_hcd and address 2
Jan 19 12:19:37 localhost kernel: usb 2-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jan 19 12:19:37 localhost kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Jan 19 12:19:37 localhost kernel: scsi6 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass
Storage devices
Jan 19 12:19:37 localhost kernel: usbcore: registered new interface
driver usb-storage
Jan 19 12:19:37 localhost kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost kernel: scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WD
    2500BEA External 1.04 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 488397168 512-byte
hardware sectors (250059 MB)
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive
cache: write through
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 488397168 512-byte
hardware sectors (250059 MB)
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive
cache: write through
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost kernel:  sdb: sdb1
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost kernel: sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost ntfs-3g[9802]: Version 1.1120
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost ntfs-3g[9802]: Mounted /dev/sdb1
(Read-Write, label "Backups", NTFS 3.1)
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost ntfs-3g[9802]: Cmdline options:
rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,locale=en_US.UTF-8
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost ntfs-3g[9802]: Mount options:
rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,silent,allow_other,nonempty,relatime,fsname=/dev/sdb1,blkdev,blksize=4096
Jan 19 12:19:42 localhost hald: mounted /dev/sdb1 on behalf of uid 500

I umounted the device:

Jan 19 12:26:00 localhost ntfs-3g[9802]: Unmounting /dev/sdb1 (Backups)
Jan 19 12:26:00 localhost kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
Jan 19 12:26:00 localhost kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0

Here's when I think it all went wrong:

Jan 19 12:28:48 localhost kernel: usb 2-3: USB disconnect, address 2

Why's that? Timeout??!

After that, this is what happens when I try to reconnect the device:

Jan 19 12:40:23 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: new full speed USB device
using uhci_hcd and address 2
Jan 19 12:40:23 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Jan 19 12:40:24 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Jan 19 12:40:24 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: new full speed USB device
using uhci_hcd and address 3
Jan 19 12:40:24 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Jan 19 12:40:24 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Jan 19 12:40:24 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: new full speed USB device
using uhci_hcd and address 4
Jan 19 12:40:25 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: device not accepting
address 4, error -71
Jan 19 12:40:25 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: new full speed USB device
using uhci_hcd and address 5
Jan 19 12:40:25 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: device not accepting
address 5, error -71
Jan 19 12:40:35 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: new full speed USB device
using uhci_hcd and address 6
Jan 19 12:40:35 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Jan 19 12:40:35 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Jan 19 12:40:35 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: new full speed USB device
using uhci_hcd and address 7
Jan 19 12:40:36 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Jan 19 12:40:36 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Jan 19 12:40:36 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: new full speed USB device
using uhci_hcd and address 8
Jan 19 12:40:36 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: device not accepting
address 8, error -71
Jan 19 12:40:36 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: new full speed USB device
using uhci_hcd and address 9
Jan 19 12:40:37 localhost kernel: usb 7-1: device not accepting
address 9, error -71

It just goes on and on and on... =/

Neither Linux, nor WinXP nor OSX 10.4 recognize the device any longer.

Please, please, please, someone tells me this can be fixed ={ Any
advice will be welcome.

TIA

Andre