Thomas Schmitt wrote:
So, in the mind of trying more of this, I plugged and connected the device once more, for, maybe the thirtieth time... Surprise : this time, it did AUTOMOUNT the way it used to in the old days ! Or, maybe not quite the same way. But it did mount, and I have succeeded in copying files and directories on to another support, which operation took more than 2 hours (it was about 500 Gb). Copy went fine. But I can tell you that, after having shut down and unplugged the device, I could never restart it in a dozen of trials, even in testing other suitable power supplies. This most likely reveals that the hardware is faulty.Hi, arne wrote:[stuff deleted]This is probably the normal superblock in that partition. But running e2fsck might cause the end of the remaining data in the filesystem. I'd try to mount the loop device and hope to recover some files. When this is queezed out, then maybe a run of e2fsck might recover more valid files ... or ruin the filesystem. Have a nice day :) Thomas
But it may be interresting to go into details about that exceptional mount. It did automount on /dev/sdb1. But I also could see a /dev/sdb2 in listing /dev.. and, indeed, I was not surprised, since the sdb1 partition was only 500Gb while the device was 1Tb, and that I remembered that I had formated and filled 2 partitions on it. So, I tried to manually mount sdb2, but this wouldn't work : it said :
mount : filesystem type 'unknown_LVM2 type'and indeed, what there was supposed to be on this partition, according to the sticker i had left, were large files and directories from my other desktop computer, which is formated in LVM2 (soft RAID filesystem). I don't know what I could have found if I had plugged the device to that Desktop, but I won't have a chance to try.
I will inquire to know if I can get that hardware repaired... but I am not too optimistic on this...
All of this raises a number of questions concerning safe storage of data. What is available is far from reliable. Another problem is that of usb ports : on two of my three computers, usb ports have become faulty after 2-3 years ; on my old desktop dating back to 2007, on 5 usb ports, 3 are faulty ; when this started, I just had to sligntly move the plug into its slot, but this has ended in the fact that now each trial to plug anything in these slots causes an instant shutdown of the machine.
Bernard