1) You probably lost the data on the external drive; using the
whole-disk device for new filesystems will tend to do that. That
means it probably isn't FAT32 any more.
2) Don't use fsck on an active partition. That means umount it first,
or at *least* re-mount it read-only.
3)
Note1: my consoles (alt-F[1-8]) are currently black. By black, I mean they
show nothing. The monitor shows no picture and after a few seconds it will
go into power saving mode. Oddly, when in power saving mode, it doesn't give
the normal on-off-on-off with the light that it steadily does. It's
