Terminal/Unix Command to Mount External USB Drive?

I am having a probelm with the directory on an external HDD. The "device" is showing up in the utility software (DRIVE GENIUS/DISK UTILITY) but not the "volume," so it can't affect any repairs except INTIALIZE. So, I'm presuming the drive is physically okay - just the directory is fouled up. Is there some unix command to run that will repair the directory in some manner? Thanks!

Hi Metroxing,
   What you presume is not a given but yes, the existence of the device file greatly decreases the relative probability of your having a hardware problem. However, I have a question. I'm not sure of what you mean by the term "directory".
   In "UNIX" jargon a directory is that which in "Mac" jargon would be a filesystem "folder". However, there is another data structure in the filesystem that I think is called a "directory". I assume that's simply an abstraction of the Catalog B-Tree and related files. I know about this use of the term "directory" from discussions and readings on Alsoft's DiskWarrior. That is supposed to do exactly what you want, "rebuild the directory structure", and is a relatively inexpensive "best-of-breed" solution.
Gary
~~~~
   Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
         -- Fred Allen

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  • [SOLVED]failure to mount external usb drive, possible hardware malfu

    Please excuse me for posting this in the Arch forums, but I'd appreciate at least a point in the right direction. Every Google hit I came up with had a dubious solution like "reinstall USB drivers". I've never had an external drive fail on me yet, and I think this might be a sign of one. I recently moved and set up a 750gb WD external drive connected to this laptop running Arch and WinXP. Drive was working fine until this morning. I see it's entry in Thunar, but when I try to mount it:
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    Message was edited by: nerowolfe

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           dmesg | tail or so
    I ran fsck on other laptop (Fedora 17) and got file system fixed but empty (well, lots of errors, everything was linked under lost+found).
    RIP my backup (I have a copy on the storage and this one will be accessed via network only
    I re-created FS (ext3), copied on it couple gigs of test files, connected drive to dell, mounted FS, "ls" the dir, all good.
    Unmounted FS, mounted again - get what is quoted above - I/O errors.
    The same drive on the same laptop works without any problem with installed CentOS and live GRML so it is not a hardware itself.
    So far:
    1. external drive can be mounted without problem when it is just connected to Arch
    2. After some data traffic it starts to produce I/O errors.
    3. When good FS is unmounted and then mounted again the story is the same - I/O errors.
    4. As soon as it happened I cannot change FS on drive, I cannot change partition table and so on. fdisk and mkfs completed without error but FS is not there and attempt to mount produces the error above.
    Below is some info about installation:
    System is installed on encrypted with Luks LVM partition.
    External HDD is not encrypted.
    [root@darkstar ~]# uname -a
    Linux darkstar 3.6.3-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Oct 22 10:23:56 CEST 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux
    [root@darkstar ~]# pacman -Suy
    :: Synchronizing package databases...
    core is up to date
    extra is up to date
    community is up to date
    :: Starting full system upgrade...
    there is nothing to do
    [root@darkstar ~]#
    # dmesg after connection of USB drive
    [Nov 2 14:08] usb 2-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 8 using ehci_hcd
    [  +0.085473] scsi8 : usb-storage 2-1.1:1.0
    [  +1.002053] scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access        Mass  Storage Device        PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
    [  +0.001279] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] 976773166 512-byte logical blocks: (500 GB/465 GiB)
    [  +0.000664] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
    [  +0.000011] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
    [  +0.000562] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
    [  +0.000011] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
    [  +0.002354] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
    [  +0.000011] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
    [  +0.049185]  sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb3
    [  +0.003149] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
    [  +0.000022] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
    [  +0.000006] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
    [Nov 2 14:09] usb 2-1.1: reset high-speed USB device number 8 using ehci_hcd
    And this is dmesg after I tried to mount fs created on other box.
    There was also XFS volume on the same VG.
    [Nov 2 14:15] EXT4-fs (dm-8): mounted filesystem without journal. Opts: (null)
    [Nov 2 14:16] EXT4-fs (dm-8): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
    [  +0.036964] EXT4-fs (dm-8): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
    [  +0.026500] EXT4-fs (dm-8): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
    [  +0.040551] XFS (dm-8): bad magic number
    [  +0.000023] XFS (dm-8): SB validate failed
    Will appreciate any help,
    Thanks,
    Eugene.

    Little bit of testing,  just out of curiousity - do not have time to dig into it, sorry.
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    [root@darkstar test]# uname -a                                                                             
    Linux darkstar 2.6.32-279.11.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Oct 16 15:57:10 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
    [root@darkstar test]# perl -e 'print "a"x5120' |dd bs=512 count=10 of=/dev/sdb                             
    10+0 records in                                                                                             
    10+0 records out                                                                                           
    5120 bytes (5.1 kB) copied, 0.258486 s, 19.8 kB/s                                                           
    [root@darkstar test]# dd bs=512 count=10 if=/dev/sdb status=noxfer |od -tax1                               
    0000000   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a
             61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61
    0012000
    10+0 records in
    10+0 records out
    [root@darkstar test]# uname -a
    Linux darkstar 2.6.32-279.11.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Oct 16 15:57:10 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
    [root@darkstar test]# uname -a
    Linux darkstar 3.6.7-1.el6.elrepo.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Nov 18 08:35:06 EST 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
    [root@darkstar test]# perl -e 'print "7"x5120' |dd bs=512 count=10 of=/dev/sdb
    10+0 records in
    10+0 records out
    5120 bytes (5.1 kB) copied, 0.303432 s, 16.9 kB/s
    [root@darkstar test]# dd bs=512 count=10 if=/dev/sdb status=noxfer |od -tax1
    10+0 records in
    10+0 records out
    0000000   U   S   B   C   : soh nul nul nul dc4 nul nul nul nul  nl   *
             55  53  42  43  ba  01  00  00  00  14  00  00  00  00  0a  2a
    0000020 nul nul nul nul nul nul nul  nl nul nul nul nul nul nul nul   ^
             00  00  00  00  00  00  00  0a  00  00  00  00  00  00  00  de
    0000040   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a   a
             61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61  61
    0001000   7   7   7   7   7   7   7   7   7   7   7   7   7   7   7   7
             37  37  37  37  37  37  37  37  37  37  37  37  37  37  37  37
    0012000
    [root@darkstar test]# uname -a
    Linux darkstar 3.6.7-1.el6.elrepo.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Nov 18 08:35:06 EST 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
    [root@darkstar test]#
    Last edited by Eugene (2012-11-26 01:15:46)

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