External USB disk won't mount

[Bob McConnell]

From: Mark Ovens

> If anyone can tell me how to debug this to try to get to the cause so
a 
> fix can be found then I'm happy to spend the time doing so.

Unless you are already familiar with the drivers and the bus itself, or
want to learn more about it than anyone should ever need to know, it is
not likely to be a productive use of your time. Another alternative
would be to contact whomever is maintaining the driver and see if they
would be willing to take the broken device off your hands and modify the
driver to deal with it.

I haven't tried working with USB, but from what I know of other
interfaces, the first two things you are going to need are a bus sniffer
tool and a copy of the USB spec. Unless you can find where someone else
has diagnosed this device and published what they found, you are looking
at trying to identify where this implementation deviates from the
official documents and modify a driver to work with that deviation. It
might be they use non-standard commands, or the timing of some sequences
may not be correct.

I would return it as defective and replace it with a different product.
The non-standard seal of approval would also suggest a complaint to the
group that owns the genuine seal, and possibly one to your local
consumer rights advocate.

Good luck,

Bob McConnell