Hello guys! I have a (bad) notebook harddrive in a USB encasing and I would like to try to mount it under Linspire to see if I can recover any data (Windows gave no results). If I boot up with it plugged in, Control Center shows a /dev/sdb device, but no partition. There are also a bunch of errors about /dev/sdb in /var/log/messages. Unfortunately, my experience with Linux is fairly limited. I was wondering if you could tell me what the mount command would look like for a drive thusly connected via USB. Furthermore, what error should I look for to determine that the hard drive is a goner? Finally, if I am not succesful by this route, do you have any suggestions for some good data recovery software? Thanks in advance.

Hmm, sounds like the drive is knackered but its electronics persist in trying to make it work. It's unlikely you'll recover anything.

There are several options. You can try to directly mount it, using a command like

mount /dev/sdb /mnt/thingy -t vfat(perhaps with -o ro if you're concerned)

But that will probably fail. If the device can't be mounted in Windows, it probably can't be mounted in Linux either.

Another option is to use "dd" to try to transfer it into a single huge file on the HD - if there's enough space. You can then try to repair the fat filesystem (FAT is actually remarkably robust, contrary to popular belief), then loop mount the image.

However, this will probably fail, as I imagine that the device has not a single readable block.

Mark

Thank you very much! Your advice provides a great starting point!