Cant mount ext FAT32 HDD!

[dav2900]

Help!
My crappy XP has crashed however I see my data through the beautiful eyes of Knoppix 3.8.1.
Now, I have an external USB 400 Gb HDD formatted as FAT32.
When I start Knoppix, it doesn't present an icon for this hdd on the desktop.
From the device list, it shows up as: Hard Disc (uba) [/mnt/uba]
however when I click on it, it gives me this error:

mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified.
Please check that the disk is entered correctly.

How do I get this ext HDD online so I can get my data off!! It's been days now and I've read up a lot on Knoppix but I'm not a linux expert so please help with easy-to-follow instructions.

I have another ext 80 Gb HDD but that is NTFS. Knoppix lets me read that one but I can't write to it so the 400 Gb FAT32 HDD is my only hope here!!

Thanks guys!!

[Harry Kuhman]

..... external USB 400 Gb HDD formatted as FAT32.
... Hard Disc (uba) [/mnt/uba]
however when I click on it, it gives me this error:

mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified.
Please check that the disk is entered correctly.

I have another ext 80 Gb HDD but that is NTFS. Knoppix lets me read that one but I can't write to it so the 400 Gb FAT32 HDD is my only hope here!!

400 gigs is absolutely huge for a FAT32 partition. And larger than many external IDE drive boxes support. Did you perhaps load any special driver software into your Windows system when you set up this 400 gig monster that Knoppix doesn't know about? That might account for why Knoppix isn't seeing it properly. And what flavor of Windows did you format it with? I've found the hard way that I can't trust switching drives between even Win98 and WinXP without risking corrupting data, so if there is data on that 400 gig drive I would think twice about writing to it with a system that doesn't recognize the format. If your sure that everything is right with this drive and the drive itself is showing up as uba then the primary partition on the drive should be "uba1". You might try using the mount command and telling it what the partition type is (as well as that you want it mounted read/write). See man mount from a shell prompt for details.

One handy thing, as least for me, is how easy it is to change the drive in an external drive box. So in this case if you have any other smaller driver available you might want to swap one into the box and see if Knoppix can do any better with it. That's certainly the approach I would take, but if you don't have a spare smaller drive it might not be an option.

[dav2900]

Got it working after complete shutdown and restart...ha! go figure.

Thanks for your help, though.

[dav2900]

OK, so now my PC recognizes and shows the external FAT32 hdd and let's me write to it (after I uncheck the read only box). Problem is when I select multiple dir from source drive (dead XP partition) and paste onto the ext. HDD, it doesn't actually copy. It counts the # of files & dir's. When that's done, it shows "stalled" on bottom left of the 'copy file progress' window; nothing actually proceeds to copy.
I am able to create folders and copy a test file.
Am I exceeding a max copy buffer or something?

[dav2900]

BTW, I reconnected the ext FAT32 drive to my XP. I nuked the 400 Gb FAT32 partition. I recreated 2 new test FAT32 partitions, 32 Gb each in size and formatted using the 'quick' option. After reconnecting to Knoppix box and trying to copy to the 32 Gb FAT32 partition, I got same error.

When I tried copying a smaller directory (< 50 Mb), it started copying at ~15 kbps transfers speeds but quickly went down to 0 kbps, then went to the 'stalled' situation and didn't copy any further.

Since I have this NEW 400 Gb ext HDD, what is the best way for me to format/partition it so Knoppix can quickly copy large amounts of data to it so that I can also read it later from an Win XP Pro OS? The key is that XP must be able to read and copy from it later...

(anxious to get this working and move on with my life!!)

Thanks!

[dav2900]

I was finally able to delete and re-create a new 400 Gb FAT32 partition through Knoppix using cfdisk (set the type to 0C = FAT32 (LBA)).
Once that was done, I rebooted and let knoppix auto mount the drive.
I then changed properties to READ/WRITE by right clicking on the desktop icon and unchecking the READ ONLY icon.
The drive was connected again as USB2 but the transfer speed was still pretty slow: 400-700 kbps!

I repeated the process and connected the drive via Firewire. Now, finally, I achieved the faster 10-12 mbps copy speed.

I connected the hdd to my XP laptop and it was able to read the knoppix created FAT32 partition (400 Gb) and the data on it just fine.

I left the PC copying data last night. This morning, none of the windows were open. Nor could I connect to my ext. HDD. So, I shutdown everything & rebooted. Now, the ext HDD doesn't come up at all. CFDISK shows no partitions except my internal RAID5. <g>

Last night, my RAID5 came up as SDB1 and my ext HDD as SDA1. Today, my RAID5 is SDA1. Not sure if that helps anything.

More troubleshooting tonight. I'll connect the ext. HDD to my XP laptop & make sure it's not dead. OR, I'll try connecting it to my PC via USB2 instead of Firewire to test.

Any other thoughts?