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I have 1tb external drive that connects to my media server in my kids room. One day the XBMCBUNTU(xenial) running on the media server decided it no longer wanted to communicate with that drive. It does not even show up with 'fdisk -l', however, if I unplug it from the media center and plug into my MAC running PARAGON EXTFS I can see the partition and the kids movies and play them without a problem.

Is there anything that I could use to make the drive show up in fdisk so that I can mount it? or is there a config file that controls how drives are enumerated that maybe got corrupted or something? or is there something that can diagnose problems with my MBR?

Frank Barcenas
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  • You might have a dodgy USB cable or failing/dirty USB port on the media server. I would try a different port on the media server, blowing out the port with compressed (canned) air and replacing the cable. Clearly there is nothing wrong with the drive if everything works when plugged into the MAC, and the MBR isn't relevant to your issue. The output of lsusb should tell you if the external USB drive is seen by the system. – Elder Geek Nov 23 '16 at 16:56
  • @elder-geek Ok Great! thanks. I will do that. I decided to do a release upgrade so, when it gets done. I'll do the lsusb to check if the device shows up. – Frank Barcenas Nov 23 '16 at 17:08
  • Please also [edit] to reflect current conditions once you've completed the upgrade. Thank you for helping us help you! – Elder Geek Nov 23 '16 at 17:11
  • @ElderGeek What I don't understand is how something that is never touched, moved or played with in any manner could just go bad. Maybe I should check the SMART counters on the drive to see if it's going bad. – Frank Barcenas Nov 23 '16 at 17:31
  • There are numerous examples of entropy in life - meaning a gradual decline into disorder. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "It worked fine yesterday" I could retire in comfort. Not all external USB drives support SMART status although some do, so you could certainly try it. – Elder Geek Nov 23 '16 at 17:54
  • Thanks @ElderGeek for going full Steven Hawkings on me. :-) I mean understand how hard drives work and eventually wear out. But since we eliminated that as a possibility because it works on another machine. There isn't much more to go wrong. I have only once witnessed a Solid State device go bad without just cause. Well I will keep diagnosing. THanks for your help. – Frank Barcenas Nov 23 '16 at 18:20
  • @ElderGeek The problem is the drive. If I stick it in the freezer until it is cool it get recognized just fine. If the drive it warm it will not show up. – Frank Barcenas Nov 24 '16 at 05:05

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This is a hardware failure. When you get the drive recognized backup all important data with whatever method you desire so that you can replace the drive. (Personally I would recommend rsync for this task in this case as you likely have it on both your Mac and your Xenial installations and will be able to immediately begin when you get the drive recognized. I would avoid dd in this case because you would need to read every sector to get a successful image and you are better off recovering some data than no data. Based on your recent comments there is likely a bad solder joint somewhere that is interfering with your ability to access the drive when it's warm. It's rare, but I've seen it before.

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