Random diconnect of external hard drive

[dagarshali]

Hi,
I recently upgraded to 64bit ubuntu karmic koala.. The external drive that I mount via USB, randomly unmounts and I get this input/output error. And when I connect the the harddisk, in the past, just one window opened showing the contents. Now, it opens like 3 or 4 windows.

Is there any way to fix this as it is very important that I have this external hard disk running of this system

Regards,
vishwa

[oz]

With all drives plugged in and turned on, post the output of fdisk -l here, along with the contents of your /etc/fstab file so that we may all have a look.

[dagarshali]

sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8e0eee9e

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 19559 157099176 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 21941 33002 88855515 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3 33003 38913 47480107+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 21941 22462 4192933+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 22463 25073 20972826 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 25074 33002 63689661 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000098ec

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 121601 976760001 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

[Rubberman]

I suspect that the USB controller is occasionally experiencing a "hicup" and causes the driver to believe the drive has disconnected. Have you tried Jaunty instead (Ubuntu 9.04 instead of 9.10)? I know there have been some issues with regard to hardware drivers with Karmic Koala. The drivers for Jaunty might be a bit more forgiving of occasional USB signal drops.

[dagarshali]

thanks for your reply..i changed the usb cable to check if that is at fault.. looks like the cable was faulty and I haven't experienced any problems since i changed the cable.

Thanks,
Vishwa

[Rubberman]

Sometimes its the simple things...