Cannot mount /dev/sdc1 on Debian 5.0, special device /dev/sdc1 doesn't exist

I'm trying to fix an odd problem I'm having that I've never seen or heard of before. I have a disk, /dev/sdc and I'm trying to mount it, but cannot.

sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

Ok, I remember it was ext3, so,

sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sdc1 /mnt
mount: special device /dev/sdc1 does not exist

This I've never seen before either so I check /dev

ls /dev | grep sdc
brw-rw----  1 root disk      8,  32 2011-04-20 03:27 sdc

There's supposed to be an sdc1 file there as well right?
fdisk shows

Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1a2b2e31

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1               1       60801   488384001   83  Linux

So, from looking at fdisk it should be there, but it isn't. Checking /var/log/syslog, there are no messages from when I tried to mount the drive, so I don't know how to troubleshoot further. Does anyone know why this could be happening, or what I'm doing wrong, or how to fix this?

Could this be indicative of a dying device? There don't appear to be any SMART messages out of the ordinary in syslog..

Solution 1:

Try re-reading the device's partitions:

/sbin/partprobe /dev/sdc

Solution 2:

You can get the device node back by running mknod sdc1 b 8 33. That might give you enugh of a jump start to mount it, but I would work right away to get the system repaired.

It sounds like either your dev system is mucked up or your hard drive or controler is acting up. I find another drive and play aroundto see if the software is picking it up and making the correct device nodes in /dev on demand. If so, treat that drive with all suspicion. If not, do software updates and see if your dev system (devfs? udev? dev?) is throwing any error data. If it's hardware, you might try just nuking the drive patition table and all and see if starting over makes it any more cooperative.