Verify a External USB Hard Drive On a CentOS Linux Computer
Recently I had a hard drive crash that was in a Windows XP laptop. The drive would not mount under Windows however I was able to eventually mount it under Linux and rescue some of the data. In this article I will describe how to verify the USB hard drive enclosure is seen on a CentOS Linux computer and verify that Linux is able to see the USB device and the drive.
First you will want to remove the hard drive from your Windows XP computer and physically mount it into the USB hard drive enclosure. This will involve connecting it inside (IDE or SATA) and then plugging the USB cable or cables into the CentOS server. Since the hard drive is damaged its hard to know if its not reading it or if you have something misconfigured, a loose cable, etc. Below are a couple tips to make sure that the hard drive is being recognized via the USB connection.