Inspiron 620 will not work properly with a remote HD

This is not the crashed UBUNTU support Forum.

https://ubuntuforums.org/

There are other issues involved. UBUNTU any version BY DEFAULT will not auto mount nor allow you to write to USB partitions let alone partitions that have corruption.

You should be able to F12 boot UBUNTU 16.04 LTS DVD Live from DVD or USB Flash drive and see both internal and Remote USB drives.

Identify the USB filesystem. Use lsblk -f to find the UUID of the filesystem. (For basic FAT filesystems, it won't be a real UUID; it will be shorter and numeric only).

 Create a permanent mount point for the filesystem. Don't try to create it under a temporary filesystem like /run :). You can double-check whether e.g. /media is a tmpfs by checking findmnt for a /media entry. (The FSTYPE column would show tmpfs). It's a question of taste, but I would use sudo mkdir -p /mnt/nameofusb.

Choose your options.

nofail to make sure failure at boot time does not cause a failure to boot.
user to allow your unprivileged user to mount the device.
exec is not necessary because it is part of the default, according to man fstab.
errors=remount-ro is a commonly used, when a device starts to fail it will stop you writing to it, generally preventing further data loss (and giving you a nice clear signal).

The fstab line to add looks like this:

UUID=6132-6337 /mnt/nameofusb auto nofail,user,errors=remount-ro 0 0

The GUI should respect this setting if you safely remove + re-insert the device.

Manual commands could be useful for debugging if the GUI doesn't behave as expected:

sudo mount or findmnt to list mounted filesystems

sudo umount /media/removable/nameofusb to unmount a filesystem.

sudo mount /mnt/nameofusb to mount a filesystem according to /etc/fstab

lsblk -f will show the current NAME of all block devices.

udisksctl mount -b /dev/sdb1 will mount the block device named sdb1,

via the same udisks daemon which the GUI sends requests to.

Interesting problem.

However, your method seems strange. I think I would just connect any flakey/bad drives to the working machine, and try to recover the files that way.

Now-days, SSDs are nice and try to do better with your backups next time... all drives fail eventually (especially spinners).

Tesla,

Thank you for your response. My current machine (the Inspiron) does not have the option of adding a second drive, else I would have tried that first as the simplest solution. At least two of the drives in question, the one in the Inspiron and the one from the 8400 are good and not flaky. The cause of the problem was that the 8400 computer died not the HD. As I said I can boot from the remote HD and the computer works, so much as it can as it is a 32 bit OS on a 64 bit  machine.

Speedstep,

I do not have a crashed Ubuntu problem. As I alluded to I can see that some parts of the problem may lie with Ubuntu but I think the failure to boot in the specified sequence is a BIOS issue. That's why I started the information gathering process here.

I'm missing something when you say:

"You should be able to F12 boot UBUNTU 16.04 LTS DVD Live from DVD or USB Flash drive and see both internal and Remote USB drives."

The Inspiron boots properly and works correctly when I do not have the USB drive connected. I have NO functionality issues until I start connecting the USB HD. And when that drive is removed all is well again (I am using that machine to type this now). Are you saying I should use my OS live disk instead of the OS loaded on the machine?

Your other instructions are at the limit of my Ubuntu competence. It will take me a while to digest what you are telling me and to put it into practice. I may be slow but I get there eventually. I'll muddle through it and report back when I do. Thanks!

---

@sja100wrote:

Tesla,

 

Thank you for your response. My current machine (the Inspiron) does not have the option of adding a second drive, else I would have tried that first as the simplest solution. At least two of the drives in question, the one in the Inspiron and the one from the 8400 are good and not flaky. The cause of the problem was that the 8400 computer died not the HD. As I said I can boot from the remote HD and the computer works, so much as it can as it is a 32 bit OS on a 64 bit  machine.

---

I've never seen a computer with only one SATA header-port on motherboard. Usually, at least 3 are available. But even if just 2, you could disconnect the CDROM, and anything that needed to be loaded by CDROM could be imaged to a flash-drive (and booted as USB instead). 

This is not the I don't know how to use Ubuntu or the file system or  /etc/fstab file  FORUM.

By default REMOTE USB or whatever you are calling  it Drives DO NOT AUTO MOUNT.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticallyMountPartitions#Per-User_Mounts

mount them fine with the "Disk Utility" aplication and I can mount them fine with the comands

this is not YOUR drives its just an example.

/usr/bin/udisks --mount /dev/disk/by-uuid/21318E3E64707B4D

/usr/bin/udisks --mount /dev/disk/by-uuid/6439FB1D652606C4

Finding the UUID of your partition

A device name like /dev/sdb1 is based on where your physical drive is plugged in and the order the drives were made available to the computer, so if your computer changes the same command could mount a different partition. It's possible for this to happen just from a software upgrade.

The solution is to use a UUID. A UUID is a globally unique name for the partition. A UUID will remain the same if you put an internal disk into an external USB caddy, or change the name of the partition.

• Type ls -al /dev/disk/by-uuid/

Applications > Accessories > Terminal
or CTRL ALT T
You Must create a mount point using the mkdir command.

This will be the location from which you will access the /dev/sdb1 drive.
$ sudo mkdir /media/newhd

To mount the drive, enter:
$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/8400hd
$ df -H

To view files cd to /media/8400hd, enter:
$ cd /media/8400hd
$ ls -lartf

A Note About Automatic Mount At Boot Time

You need to edit /etc/fstab file, enter:
$ sudo vi /etc/fstab

Add the following line for ext3 file system:

/dev/sdb1    /media/8400hd   ext3    defaults     0        2

Add the following line for Windows FAT32 file system:

/dev/sdb1    /media/8400hd  vfat    defaults     0        2

Save and close the file.

You could also ADD a USB flash Drive that is Fat32 to one Ubuntu setup and copy the files to that then boot
the other and copy them back.  32 bit vs 64 bit is not relevant to mounting drives or copying files.

I'm not going to get into the ENTIRE DRIVE being Encrypted. 
Entire Drive Encrypted

This is not the crashed UBUNTU support Forum.