[Enigma90825]

I have Ubuntu 8.04 along with a 160 GB Seagate External Hard drive. I was working on some documents from the external with Open Office. And now the ENTIRE folder where the documents were is missing! Not the entire external, all other folders are there, just the one I was working on. Yesterday something similar happened except with only three files so I didn't do much to recover them. But I need this folder back ASAP! Any help which you may provide is GREATLY appreciated. I have already checked the trash bin, recent documents (to see if it would somehow pull up what I worked on) and searched for the documents/folder with no avail. Help me!!!

Edit: Ah! Now I can't even open up the drive! The light on it is just flashing intermittently and when I plugged it into a Vista laptop it said the drive had to be formated. This can't be good... I have so much stuff on there!

[Jonathan183]

What does

sudo fdisk -l

report with the drive plugged in? What happens when you try to manually mount a partition on the drive?

[Enigma90825]

The sudo fdisk -l reports this:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00063a9e

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        1216     9767488+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2           19093       19457     2931862+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3            1217       19092   143588970   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdg: 2062 MB, 2062548992 bytes
16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 7868 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe6a8f6e1

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdg1               1        7868     2014192    e  W95 FAT16 (LBA)

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000609

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1       19457   156288321    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

I'm not sure if that is my external or my internal hard drive which is being talked about, since they are both 160 GB. (I don't think there are any partitions on the external one which I'm having the problems with though)
And what do you mean when you say "manually mount a partition to the drive?"

Edit: So the drive is working, albeit slowly. Now I just need to figure out where these files went! Oh yeah, I was thinking, is there any kind of set up I should have done for this external? I just plugged it in and it came up on my desktop.

[Jonathan183]

sda is your drive with Linux on, sdb is a drive with a single partition fat32 format (I guess this is the external drive you are trying to access).
Try to manually mount the drive using

sudo mkdir /media/sdb1
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1
ls /media/sdb1 -l

Does the drive mount without errors?

[Enigma90825]

Yes, I'm pretty sure it mounts without any errors. At least when I tried it a second time it said that the device was already mounted or was busy. Now on the drive there is also a new folder (or at least I haven't seen it before) that says System Volume Information, and in it are 6 folders which say _restore{ and then a bunch of numbers and letters, should I try anything with those?

[Jonathan183]

What output do you get with the ls command? What are the folder names and what program if any have you used to transfer information to/from the USB drive?
Try running df -h and see how much of the drive space has been used ... you can search folders etc for your data but I suggest at the moment you don't run programs until you have worked out where your data is.

[Enigma90825]

Okay, I'm not running any programs on it for now, and am just leaving it where it is. Just to say though, I CAN access the drive from my desktop (However it is now called "160 GB Media" instead of "Seagate" as it was previously) The only problem is that it runs very slowly (takes a good 45 seconds to open a folder in it) and that the other folder I am looking for is missing. And, I haven't been using any program to transfer files to or from the drive, I've just dragged and dropped a file if I need it elsewhere.

And after I run that code you gave me (this is me running it a second time however, because I didn't save the output before) I get the following output after the second line of code.
"mount: special device /dev/sdb1 does not exist"

Thanks for your help Jonathan183!

[Jonathan183]

It sounds like you may have an issue with either the drive or the interface. If you run sudo fdisk -l and the drive is not listed I would say that points to a hardware problem. Probably a good time to backup essential data and try to work out what is causing the issue.

[Enigma90825]

Yeah, I guess. I'm going away for a couple weeks and will work on it when I get back. I'll probably buy another external drive by then and just transfer everything I need to the new one.

Any suggestions on how to get back the missing files???

[Jonathan183]

I would not rush out to buy a new drive just yet. Can you post ls -Rl for the drive.