Mounting an External USB Hard Drive

[sam tygier]

On 09/03/11 14:38, Amichai Rotman wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have an external USB Hard Drive connected to my desktop running Ubuntu Lucid. I want this hard drive to be available all the time (I rearly take it with me). I added the following line in the '/etc/fstab' file, followin advice I got via this list:
>
> UUID=4c881181-6b15-4910-a09f-0f3c88354440 /Data  ext3 rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks 0 0
>
> It worked fine for a long time, but lately I started to notice the disk is not mounted when I try to access files on it. Sometimes running 'sudo mount /Data' is enough, but sometimes I get an error saying the UUID does not exist...
>
> It usually happens after a long time I don't use the computer (more than 30 minutes). I have set my screen saver to 'Picture Folder' and that folder is a symlink to a directory on that disk, so it's been accessed all the time...
>
> Is the hard drive faulty?
> Is there a system check I can run to verify?
> Where do I look for clues?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Amichai.
>

system->administration->disk utility
can do some disk checks  (use the 'SMART data' button)

otherwise you might want to look for interesting messages in dmesg  (run 'dmesg' in a teminal)

sam