Ubuntu – USB drive will show up with lsusb and dmesg, but won’t mount

mountusb-drive

I accidentally removed a USB drive before it was "safe" to do so. When plugging in the drive, it isn't recognized and mounted automatically like it used to be. Running sudo fdisk -l, the drive does not show up. But when I run lsusb, it shows up as the unnamed device:

Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:8000 Intel Corp.
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:8008 Intel Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 012: ID ffff:1201
Bus 003 Device 005: ID 0489:e07a Foxconn / Hon Hai
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 174f:14b8 Syntek
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

It is also detected in dmesg:

[ 7428.334472] usb 3-9: new high-speed USB device number 12 using xhci_hcd
[ 7428.354925] usb 3-9: New USB device found, idVendor=ffff, idProduct=1201, bcdDevice= 0.00
[ 7428.354930] usb 3-9: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
[ 7428.356161] usb-storage 3-9:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 7428.356642] scsi host6: usb-storage 3-9:1.0
[ 7429.363317] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     NAND     USB2DISK         0.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
[ 7429.364077] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
[ 7429.365261] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

However, if I try to mount it, I get:

sudo mount /dev/sdb /mnt
mount: /mnt: no medium found on /dev/sdb.

Any ideas? I'm in a bit over my head here when it comes to hardware issues.

Best Answer

Check whether the USB shows in "Disks". If it shows there, check whether you have any partitions created on your USB, or it shows free space. It will look similar to this:

If it shows free space only, then you need a Data Recovery Software to recover your data as the partitions on your USB are deleted.Some free data recovery software for Linux. To create a new partition on your USB, click on the plus sign in Disks to create a new partition and format it as ntfs.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Nikon P7100 doesn’t connect as a mass storage device

Using Usb_modeswitch as discussed above won't work, but there are some alternative ways of accessing your photos , at least one of which should work for you:

On some cameras (like my friend's Nikon D70) there is an option on the camera that allows you to connect it to the computer as a mass storage device. However, on your P7100 I don't think there is that option after looking through the specs listed at the official site and studying the manual.

However, there is one option that might work for you; as you know your camera is a MTP device you could try mounting it manually with gvfs-mount and the gphoto2 protocol which has support for MTP devices. All you need to do is find (as you have done already) the usb bus location of your camera (i.e. the two numbers: Bus 002, Device 007), although that will probably change every time you connect your camera, so remember to check with lsusb. Enter, for example:

gvfs-mount gphoto2://[usb:002,007]

Then the camera should be available for you to import pictures via applications like gthumb, or at the very least you will be able to browse the .gvfs folder where it is mounted (enable hidden files in your file browser to see the .gvfs folder).

For Ubuntu 12.10 and later: the ~/.gvfs folder is now at /run/user/username/gvfs.

If the mount does not succeed, you could obviously take the memory card out and place it in a card-reader, but perhaps that is not what you want to do.

Ubuntu – (re) mount usb device

Figure out its uuid:

(At least once, under whatever circumstances, if nothing helps, by mounting it on a friends machine). First, let's get the current id. (that can change again, on another time)

mount | grep ^/dev

You should somewhere should recognize its actual name here,

/dev/sda4...
/dev/sda5 on /boot ...
/dev/sdc1 on /media/frank/iPhoneWhatsoever...
/dev/sdc2 on /media/frank/my BackupDrive...

Now, say, it's sdb1. Let's figure out its truly unique uuid:

$> ll /dev/disk/by-uuid/ | grep sdc1

Should get you a fairly long string (often hex, sometimes with dashes)

lrwxrwxrwx [...]  366A2F886A2F003A -> ../../sdc1

manual mount

directory must pre-exist, not taken care of. so generate it (only once, ever):

sudo mkdir /media/myFx

And here we go

mount /dev/disk/by-uuid/366A2F886A2F003A /media/myFX

manual unmount

sudo umount /dev/disk/by-uuid/366A2F886A2F003A

Additionally if not done yet, add it to /etc/fstab. For that or for mount command (see man pages) you might want to use additional parameters, if there are problems with your preferred user rights, a ‘rare’ drive format etc... Just as a sketch:

sudo mount -t ntfs -o umask=007,gid=046,uid=0,nls=utf8 /dev/disk/by-uuid/366A2F886A2F003A /media/myFX

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – Nikon P7100 doesn’t connect as a mass storage device

Ubuntu – (re) mount usb device

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