Filesystem sporadically unmounts

[escozzia]

It's kinda sad that my second thread here is about the same drive than the previous one
But, anyway, I've got this (almost full by the way, hehe) 300GB vfat filesystem on an external hard drive, and I use it constantly. Recently, it started unmounting out of the blue. At first, it didn't happen too often, but it's been getting more and more common, and by now I can't go 15 minutes without the drive unmounting (I use it, among other things, for my music, so when it unmounts the music stops)
The problem is, nothing seems to be wrong with it: fsck doesn't report anything weird, and SMART tests say it's perfectly fine, so it's not some kind of mechanical failure. I bought it about three years ago, so I think it's relatively young.

I'm even starting to suspect of something stupid, like the cables (the usb cable I use to plug it into the computer and the cable that goes into the wall) or the drive case itself.
I'm totally clueless here, I know this might not be a software problem (although I sure hope it is) but if anybody could help me I'd be extremely thankful.

Edit: of course, if there's a breach of the rules by posting something that may not be software related in here, do let me know

[atreyu]

Have you been monitoring /var/log/messages and the output of dmesg? There may be some hints in there.

Are you monitoring the temperature of it to make sure it is not getting too hot (long shot...)?

Have you checked for firmware updates to the drive, or used low-level diagnostics supplied by the drive vendor?

[escozzia]

Have you been monitoring /var/log/messages and the output of dmesg? There may be some hints in there.

Mmm I'm getting a bunch of "FAT: Directory bread(block <insert block number here>) failed" errors, (which do seem to show up whenever it's just dismounted) I have no idea what they mean, any help?

Are you monitoring the temperature of it to make sure it is not getting too hot (long shot...)?

While this is a long shot () it may not be that far-fetched: I've always had temperature trouble with this computer (although the drive is an external drive, but the entire desk gets really hot) and the weather's been really hot lately, which could explain the sudden intensification of this problem
I guess I'll try putting the fan on, see if that helps

Have you checked for firmware updates to the drive, or used low-level diagnostics supplied by the drive vendor?

Mm, I have not tried any of these, as I mentioned the only diagnostic I've run is SMART, I'll check Western Digital's website to see if there's anything.


Thanks a bunch!

[atreyu]

Not sure about the FAT bread problems...have you run fsck.vfat on the partition?

Re: temperature, check out the hddtemp package, it comes with many distros, and is quick and easy to install/use.