"mount: special device /dev/sdc1 doesn't exist" but according to fdisk -l, it does

Question

I'm booted into a live usb linux environment, and I plugged in a hard drive. It's listed in fdisk -l as /dev/sdc{,1}, is a 3tb drive, and has a single partition containing an xfs filesystem.

But when i try to mount it with

sudo bash
mkdir /3
mount /dev/sdc1 /3

I get:

 "mount: special device /dev/sdc1 doesn't exist" 

What could be the problem?

Solution

A 3TB disk cannot have a MBR, because it exceeds the (in-)famous 2TiB limit. It sports instead a GPT, GUID Partition Table. As such, it cannot be inspected and/or handled by utilities of the fdisk family, it must be operated on by gdisk and similar (cgdisk, sgdisk). Also, the live distro you mention but do not specify must have in-built support for EFI-GPT. I suggest you take a look at this excellent introduction article, by the very same guy who wrote gdisk.

Comments

[Keith]

What does ls -l /dev/sdc* show?

[Jjames]

Can we also get the output of fdisk -l?

[David Foerster]

The output of stat /dev/sdc1 and blkid /dev/sdc1 would be helpful as well.