# Firewire external HDD not seen [solved]

## h2sammo

it doesnt list, only my local HDD shows. i can hear the external HDD spin and it powers on when plugged into firewire. It is a Lacie and i have some backed up files from a Mac on it i wish to retrieve.

```
main bobby # lspci | grep FireWire

02:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306 Fire II IEEE 1394 OHCI Link Layer Controller (rev 80)

```

```
main bobby # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x00000001

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sda1   *           1           5       40131   83  Linux

/dev/sda2               6         255     2008125   82  Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/sda3             256       24321   193310145   83  Linux

```

```
main bobby # lsusb

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 002 Device 002: ID 047d:102d Kensington Pilot Optical

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
```

Last edited by h2sammo on Sun Mar 14, 2010 11:31 pm; edited 1 time in total

----------

## NeddySeagoon

h2sammo,

Do you have firewire support in your kernel ?

What sort of partition is on the device?

As it was used with a Mac, do you have support for the partition table ?

What about the filesystem ... you need kernel support for that too.

As nothing shows in /dev for the drive, it has be some firewire settings in your kernel, the other issues will come later, after you have a /dev/sdb

Check your kernel

```
  │ │        *** You can enable one or both FireWire driver stacks. ***   │ │  

  │ │        *** The newer stack is recommended. ***                      │ │  

  │ │    <M> FireWire driver stack                                        │ │  

  │ │    <M>   OHCI-1394 controllers                                      │ │  

  │ │    <M>   Storage devices (SBP-2 protocol)                           │ │  

  │ │    < >   IP networking over 1394 (EXPERIMENTAL)                     │ │  

  │ │    < > Legacy alternative FireWire driver stack 
```

You may use <M> or <Y> but <M> will be faster as you don't need to do the whole kernel build/install

----------

## h2sammo

ok i enabled the necessary kernel options for FireWire and now the external HDD lists:

```
main linux # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x00000001

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sda1   *           1           5       40131   83  Linux

/dev/sda2               6         255     2008125   82  Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/sda3             256       24321   193310145   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table
```

how can i figure out what partition table is has (it was for a mac...) and how can i see and use whats on it?

----------

## NeddySeagoon

h2sammo,

If it was native Mac, it will be 

```
 [*]   Macintosh partition map support (NEW)
```

that you need.

If Macs have moved to GPT, if will be 

```
 [*]   EFI GUID Partition support (NEW) 
```

Its unlikely to be any of the others, so turn on both of those options.

Now to the filesystem,

```
  │ │    <*>   Apple Macintosh file system support (EXPERIMENTAL)         │ │  

  │ │    <*>   Apple Extended HFS file system support 
```

look promising choices.

----------

## h2sammo

hm, i have all those enabled already. might it be FAT32 or ntfs? i remember partitioning the device myself from a mac but i dont remember how i did it...

----------

## NeddySeagoon

h2sammo,

It may be FAT32, it may also be UDF.

Until you get partition table support, so you can see the partitions in /dev, worrying about the file system is putting the cart before the horse.

----------

## h2sammo

sorry i was confusing the two.

i am stuck at getting partition support. i have had enabled those settings which you suggested but to no avail.  what should i do?

----------

## NeddySeagoon

h2sammo,

Check you are running the kernel you think your are - look at the build date/time in 

```
uname -a
```

It shows the time the kernel was built.

Check the version against that shown by 

```
readlink /usr/src/linux
```

if the two are not the same, there is a good chance you are not running the kernel you are compiling.

If you made the options as <M> check that the modules are loaded.

Its very easy to build one kernel and run another - its also easy to overlook loading modules as most load automatically now. 

Investigate any errors - I'll look back in about 15 hours ... meantime its bedtime here.

----------

## h2sammo

```
main bobby # uname -a

Linux main 2.6.31-gentoo-r6 #10 SMP PREEMPT Sat Mar 13 17:53:04 CST 2010 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

main bobby # readlink /usr/src/linux

linux-2.6.31-gentoo-r6
```

```
 lqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq Partition Types qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqk

  x  Arrow keys navigate the menu.  <Enter> selects submenus --->.          x  

  x  Highlighted letters are hotkeys.  Pressing <Y> includes, <N> excludes, x  

  x  <M> modularizes features.  Press <Esc><Esc> to exit, <?> for Help, </> x  

  x  for Search.  Legend: [*] built-in  [ ] excluded  <M> module  < >       x  

  x lqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqk x  

  x x    [*] Advanced partition selection                                 x x  

  x x    [ ]   Acorn partition support                                    x x  

  x x    [ ]   Alpha OSF partition support                                x x  

  x x    [*]   Amiga partition table support                              x x  

  x x    [ ]   Atari partition table support                              x x  

  x x    [*]   Macintosh partition map support                            x x  

  x x    [*]   PC BIOS (MSDOS partition tables) support                   x x  

  x x    [ ]     BSD disklabel (FreeBSD partition tables) support         x x  

  x x    [ ]     Minix subpartition support                               x x  

  x x    [ ]     Solaris (x86) partition table support                    x x  

  x x    [ ]     Unixware slices support                                  x x  

  x x    [*]   Windows Logical Disk Manager (Dynamic Disk) support        x x  

  x x    [ ]     Windows LDM extra logging                                x x  

  x x    [ ]   SGI partition support                                      x x  

  x x    [ ]   Ultrix partition table support                             x x  

  x x    [ ]   Sun partition tables support                               x x  

  x x    [ ]   Karma Partition support                                    x x  

  x x    [*]   EFI GUID Partition support                                 x x  

  x x    [ ]   SYSV68 partition table support                             x x  

  x x                                          
```

thank you and have a good night  :Smile: 

it seems i am running proper kernel

----------

## NeddySeagoon

h2sammo,

It would help if you can research the Mac that you used to partition and format the firewire drive.

Lets try something silly, that I don't expect to work ... but just might.

Try mounting the whole device - just maybe its organised like a huge floppy, with no partitions.

If it fails, its harmless.

Something else to try is to make an image in a file of the first 20Mb or so, then ask file what it thinks the image file contains.

thats 

```
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/image.bin bs=1000000 count=24

file /image.bin
```

dd does not have a safety net - be sure you get if (input file) and of (output file) the right way round or you will make a mess of /dev/sdb

----------

## h2sammo

I dont have the MAC i used to do the partition but i looked at my wifes mac air and in the Disk utility it says its partitions are GUID partition tables.

my HDD is an external Lacie 120gb

I tried just mounting the device as follows:

```
main bobby # mount /dev/sdb /mnt/usb

mount: you must specify the filesystem type

main bobby # mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb

mount: you must specify the filesystem type

main bobby # mount -l                      

/dev/sda3 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime)

proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=10240k,mode=755)

devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620)

/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw,noatime)

shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)

usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,devmode=0664,devgid=85)

binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)

main bobby # mount -t FAT32 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb

mount: unknown filesystem type 'FAT32'

mount: maybe you meant 'vfat'?

main bobby # mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,

       missing codepage or helper program, or other error

       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try

       dmesg | tail  or so

```

```
main bobby # dmesg | tail

[60832.002478] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 11 00 00 00

[60832.003216] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA

[60832.005982]  sdb: [mac] sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 sdb4 sdb5 sdb6 sdb7 sdb8 sdb9 sdb10 sdb11

[60832.038953] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

[60867.170625] FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors

[60867.170628] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb.

[60901.086814] FAT: invalid media value (0x00)

[60901.086816] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1.

[61007.912924] FAT: invalid media value (0x00)

[61007.912927] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1.
```

i made the image as indicated but i dont see useful info from the "file" command

```
main bobby # dd if=/dev/sdb of=/image.bin bs=1000000 count=24

24+0 records in

24+0 records out

24000000 bytes (24 MB) copied, 0.910373 s, 26.4 MB/s

main bobby # file /image.bin

/image.bin: data

```

i also did this:

```
main bobby # gdisk -l /dev/sdb

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.6.4

Partition table scan:

  MBR: not present

  BSD: not present

  APM: present

  GPT: not present

*******************************************************************

This disk appears to contain an Apple-format (APM) partition table!

*******************************************************************

Creating new GPT entries.

Warning! Secondary partition table overlaps the last partition by 8233810907721311411 blocks!

You will need to delete this partition or resize it in another utility.

Disk /dev/sdb: 234441648 sectors, 111.8 GiB

Logical sector size: 512 bytes

Disk identifier (GUID): 4E113953-EF75-49C4-8DD5-0643339FD229

Partition table holds up to 128 entries

First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 234441614

Total free space is 234441581 sectors (111.8 GiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name

```

so its an APM partition table...?

----------

## NeddySeagoon

h2sammo,

Yes, it does seem to be.

That tells us its a GPT disk label, which is  

```
[*]   EFI GUID Partition support (NEW)
```

so you shuld have been able to see the partition(s) in /dev

Indeed 

```
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb 
```

did not give an error about a non existant device - is  /dev/sdb1 present ?

Try hfs or hpfs for the filesystem type.

----------

## h2sammo

haha i got it.

```
main bobby # mount -t hfsplus /dev/sdb10 /mnt/usb
```

also... for future ref, gparted shows all the partitions on that drive with the respective file formats (hfs+) in this case.

thank you

----------

## a_me

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> 
> 
> If Macs have moved to GPT, if will be 
> 
> ```
> ...

 

Thanks a lot, this was, what I was missing  :Smile: 

----------

