Folks, I've just switched from Ubuntu to Suse 10.1. An outboard USB hard drive (Maxtor 300 GB) no longer seems to respond to mount/umount commands (as root), although it did under Ubuntu. I'm trying to find a way to recover it without losing the data on board (it's my backup). More specifically, when I run fdisk -l, I get: Disk /dev/sda: 300.0 GB, 300090728448 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36483 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 36483 293049666 83 Linux dmesg give me: Vendor: Maxtor Model: OneTouch II Rev: 023g Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 04 SCSI device sda: 586114704 512-byte hdwr sectors (300091 MB) sda: Write Protect is off sda: Mode Sense: 24 00 00 00 sda: assuming drive cache: write through SCSI device sda: 586114704 512-byte hdwr sectors (300091 MB) sda: Write Protect is off sda: Mode Sense: 24 00 00 00 sda: assuming drive cache: write through sda: sda1 sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0 usb-storage: device scan complete *But* >mount /dev/sda1 gives me: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1, missing codepage or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so So, when I run dmesg | tail, I get: sda: Mode Sense: 24 00 00 00 sda: assuming drive cache: write through sda: sda1 sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0 usb-storage: device scan complete martian destination 0.144.60.17 from 192.168.0.1, dev wlan0 martian destination 0.144.60.17 from 192.168.0.1, dev wlan0 FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sda1. Is this drive toast? Or are there specific steps I can take to make things right enough to recover the data (and even make the entire drive useful again!)? With best regards, Pete -- Peter N. Spotts | Science reporter The Christian Science Monitor One Norway Street, Boston, MA 02115 USA Office: 617-450-2449 | Office-in-home: 508-520-3139 Email: pspotts@alum.mit.edu | Amateur radio call: KC1jb www.csmonitor.com | www.peterspotts.net