unknown partition table

[Daniel Armstrong]

On 6/29/06, William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 29, 2006 at 06:09:51PM -0400, Daniel Armstrong wrote:
> > I have a external USB hard drive with 2 partitions (sda1 -swap, sda2
> > -ext3) that I regularly attach to my main box as a backup drive.
> > Today, when I attached this external drive it states it has a "unknown
> > partition table" and refuses to mount.
> ...
> > Jun 29 17:38:42 kambei kernel:   Vendor: WDC WD16  Model: 00JB-00GVA0
>
> From top of my head:
>     1. WDC -- good life lesson here.
>     2. bad USB enclosure -- take the harddisk out of USB enclosure, and
>             connect directly to IDE cable.

I have bought several Western Digital drives in the last few years
with no problems... until today, that is. :-)

What drives manufacterer would you recommend?

I think this drive is toast. This is what I get from gpart:

~$ gpart /dev/sda

Begin scan...
Possible partition(Linux swap), size(486mb), offset(0mb)

* Warning: short read near sector(1760409), 36864 bytes instead of
66048. Skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(1760481), skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(1760544), skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(1760607), skipping...

* Warning: short read near sector(5103828), 39424 bytes instead of
66048. Skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(5103905), skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(5103968), skipping...

* Warning: short read near sector(275035595), 39936 bytes instead of
66048. Skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(275035673), skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(275035736), skipping...

* Warning: short read near sector(290522207), 37888 bytes instead of
66048. Skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(290522281), skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(290522344), skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(290522407), skipping...

* Warning: short read near sector(311186155), 39936 bytes instead of
66048. Skipping...

* Warning: read error (EIO) near sector(311186233), skipping...
End scan.

Checking partitions...
Partition(Linux swap or Solaris/x86): primary
Ok.

Guessed primary partition table:
Primary partition(1)
type: 130(0x82)(Linux swap or Solaris/x86)
size: 486mb #s(995960) s(63-996022)
chs:  (0/1/1)-(61/254/56)d (0/1/1)-(61/254/56)r

Primary partition(2)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs:  (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

Primary partition(3)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs:  (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

Primary partition(4)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs:  (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

This drive had 2 primary partitions on it - gpart correctly noted that
sda1 was a swap partition, but fails to see that sda2 was a ext3
partition. Plus all those read errors.
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