11.04 does not mount usb hardrive

Asked by Elias K Gardner

Ive been using natty narwhal since alpha 3 and recently did a fresh install for the release of ubuntu 11.04.

All this time the system has been unable to recognize a western digital 1Tb my book usb hard drive. This drive worked on the same computer under 10.10 and it still works on windows xp machines. Also much smaller usb flash drives are recognized by the computer.

lsusb output with the drive plugged in and running is:
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 006: ID 0a5c:2110 Broadcom Corp. Bluetooth Controller
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0483:2016 SGS Thomson Microelectronics Fingerprint Reader
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0951:1607 Kingston Technology DataTraveler 100
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

You can see the kingston usb flash drive but not the larger WD usb drive.

dmesg again shows the kingston drive but nothing for the WD.

I will say when I plug and unplug the WD from the computer the drive audibly spins up and then down indicating it has some knowledge of being plugged in.

So any ideas? What can I do to track this problem down?

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Ubuntu util-linux Edit question
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Solved by:
Patrick M
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Best Patrick M (prmillius) said :
#1

I had a similar issue. do you have mountmanager installled? if not you can get it from software center or synaptic. Follow the help in mount manager to create a DYNAMIC mount point for the external drive. sounds like for some reason natty removed the mount point for the external drive. It should show up in mountmanager, probably as "sdb1" sda1 will be the internal hard drive. Leave that alone! (read about dynamic mount points; you most likely do not want to use the physical location (sdb1) as the mount point; as this creates a static mount, which will will make it very hard to read and write to/from the drive

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Elias K Gardner (zorkerz) said :
#2

That did it! Thank you Patrick M. I am even more happy to report that I could remove mountmanager and the drive automounts as it should.

This seems like a bug to me. Plugging in this drive was one of the first things I did when I installed Ubuntu 11.04. It would be appropriate to report it right?

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Elias K Gardner (zorkerz) said :
#3

Thanks Patrick M, that solved my question.

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mariorene (mariorene) said :
#4

Thanks Patrick M, that solved my question