What happens if you forget to create a primary partition?

[Rashkae]

Alexandra Zaharia wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I bought a Western Digital 1 TB external HDD. I had some file system
> creation errors...
> 
> I'll skip the details.
> 
> Long story short, I was trying different partition sizes combinations
> and at some point during the night I was sleepy and created a 1 TB
> *extended* partition from gparted without creating any primary one.
> 
> Would that be the cause for rendering my disk useless?
> 
> And by useless I mean really, totally, terminally useless: I can't
> even see anything for it when I plug it in (via the USB interface) in
> /var/log/messages.
> 
> When I received file system creation errors, before doing this (i.e.
> creating solely the extended partition), it was simple -- all I had to
> do was to plug it out, plug it in again, wait for /var/log/messages to
> display some lines like this:
> 
> Jun  3 10:41:51 asus kernel: [25944.052209] input: Western Digital My
> Book as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb2/2-3/2-3:1.1/input/input17
> Jun  3 10:41:51 asus kernel: [25944.060975] generic-usb
> 0003:1058:1103.0008: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Device [Western
> Digital My Book] on usb-0000:00:1d.7-3/input1
> 
> and then I had the device accessible via /dev/sdb. Now it's not "seen" anymore.
> 
> I can't even 'fix' it from Windows (that administrative tools/computer
> management/disk management feature).
> 
> In addition to this, after I plug it in, the light on it flashes for a
> few seconds and then goes up and down (same as it does when there are
> I/O operations performed on the drive). When everything is fine, it
> should just stay lit.
> 
> Somehow, I doubt this whole mess is caused by the kernel not "seeing"
> the drive connected via USB... IMO it would be the same on a standard
> SATA port. However, short of breaking the case and plugging the hard
> disk IN a computer (on a SATA connector), is there anything else I
> might have overlooked?


Partitioning a drive with only an Extended partition is perfectly
normal.  I would surmise, purely by unsubstantiated conjecture, that
your file creation errors were from a malfunctioning drive, and now that
path has simply come to it's natural end.