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I have a big problem with one usb drive: I was copying something on it when for some strange reason, the power went out. I have no battery in my laptop so it immediately shut down. After my laptop went back online, i tried to access my USB drive but nothing shows when browsing for it. Tried on windows, OS X, even my TV but it does not mount for some reason.

I tried searching for it in terminal but after using: sudo fdisk -l i got nothing special..

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xfca4ac74

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048      206847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2          206848    84092927    41943040    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3        84092928   209922047    62914560    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       209922048   488394751   139236352    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT    

any ideas?

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  • I'm trying to understand your configuration. With the report you have provided, it would appear you have a 250gb USB flash drive containing four partitions as your primary drive. I'm not questioning that, as I do something similar myself, but I don't encounter other people doing that very often. I am also curious why it is you don't have a battery for your laptop. If you provide the laptop brand and model I'll try to find an appealing price for you online.
    – gyropyge
    Jan 4, 2015 at 21:09
  • This thread may be useful. It shows how to detect/mount usb devices. (I don't have enough reputation to post a comment.)
    – Daniel
    Jan 4, 2015 at 21:11
  • I am sorry for not providing enough info. First of all, that is my HDD (250 GB) I also use a 16 GB flash drive to run Ubuntu on right now, the problem is that my other drive (same 16 GB) is not there... GParted does not see it and now that I think of it it seems to be dead.. Just dead :( . Also, my laptop battery does not hold a charge any more. It died just after this Christmas and I was waiting for this Monday to get a new one. Jan 4, 2015 at 21:48
  • I'm sorry to hear of your many difficulties. It is not often I encounter a dead usb flash drive, of any size or age, so unless I have some particular reason to suspect this one, I'll remain optimistic. I think that at the very least you should try the same "dead" stick in other usb ports and other computers just in case its really that simple. The reason I offered to help you find a good deal on a battery is that I'm pretty good at finding excellent values between $6-15 typically, and most people are not.
    – gyropyge
    Jan 4, 2015 at 21:55

1 Answer 1

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Is this drive setup to automount in fstab? If so just try

 mount -a

If not, or if that dont help, Its probably corrupted. Is there info on it you need?

If not, launch GParted as root

sudo apt-get install gparted 

Press Alt+F2 and type

 gksudo gparted 

then it will ask for your password and then it should run as root.

Does the drive show here and give any info? If there nothing on it, just repartition and format

Edit: If you do need to salvage info, I found a post where someone had similar issue and recovered files with PhotoRec

Once recovery done then do the gparted steps.

Disclaimer: I have not ever used PhotoRec

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  • In case you read this answer before I updated, please recheck answer.
    – geoffmcc
    Jan 4, 2015 at 21:25

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