Need to fsck a FAT filesystem in Debian? Plus two ways to pour on the juice for a USB-powered hard drive

While a powered USB hub will run this 500 GB Toshiba portable hard drive with my Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop, the "two regular USB plugs to one small USB plug" cable, if you can find one, will also do the job.

I have a portable USB drive that has an ext3 Linux partition and a FAT Windows partition.

The drive is a bit flaky due, I'm pretty sure, inadequate power from the USB connection. My solution in the next few paragraphs is less than ideal, and I've since found a better way to make my drive work.

I have a powered USB hub which solved the problem, but it turns out I have to have the drive plugged into a certain one of my four USB outputs from the hub. I assume the other ports just don't deliver enough power.

I plugged it into the "wrong" one (and didn't know until now that there IS a "wrong" one) and had a lot of trouble with the drive.

Now it's plugged into the "right" USB port on the hub. I want to fsck the drive to see how the filesystems are doing.

When I tried to check the FAT partition:

$ sudo fsck /dev/sda1

I got this error:

fsck: fsck.vfat: not found
fsck: Error 2 while executing fsck.vfat for /dev/sda1

A little Googling provided the answer:

To fsck a FAT partition/drive, you need the dosfstools package.

I used Synaptic to install dosfstools, and then I was able to fsck my FAT partition.

Moral of this story: Portable hard drives don't always work. Some PCs just don't supply enough juice through USB to spin 'em properly. The el-cheapo Toshiba portable drive I'm using, model No. HDDR500E04X, doesn't have the provision for connecting an external power supply. Other portable drives, including those sold by Iomega, do include a power plug in case USB isn't making it happen.

If I had known this, I wouldn't have purchased the Toshiba in the first place. In my opinion, better choices include a drive designed for "desktop" use that comes with its own power supply, or a portable drive that can be powered via a traditional power adapter (and not just the USB) if needed.

Using a powered USB hub is not the best solution, especially now that I've learned the Toshiba "likes" one of the USB ports on the hub better than another (i.e. it won't work on port 3 but will on port 4).

One way to make USB-powered drives work if you have "weak" USB power:

Daily News photo guru Shane Kidder showed me an interesting cable — one that combines two USB inputs into one — so a device powered by USB can presumably get more juice.

I borrowed the cable from Shane and plugged it into two of my three USB ports on the Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101. Believe it or not, it works.

I successfully rsynced my laptop to the Toshiba USB drive, and it performs perfectly ... all I need to do it devote two USB ports to it.

But a working hack, I'll accept any day. Now all I have to do is find one of these franken-USB cables.