Ubuntu
gnome-terminal package

Unable to mount a usb hard drive

Asked by eoalvarez

Tried mounting a usb hard drive, seagate. But no avail. Tried using the synaptic manager, installing usb mount and p mount packages didn't work. Icon for hard drive appears on places drop down not on desk top.
Error pops up

Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or you have hardware faults, or you have a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows TWICE. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If you have SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first you must activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation

I have no idea what that means

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marcobra (Marco Braida)
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Best marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

Your hard disk NTFS partition may be in error state and cannot be mounted...
Please make an fully hard-disk/partition check of your NTFS filesystem under windows and then retry

Hope this helps

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eoalvarez (eoalvarez) said : 		#2

Could you give me a quick run by on how to do that.

I do not have windows on my computer, so I will have to use another one to do so...

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#3

On Ubuntu you can try to use the: ntfsfix - fix common errors and force Windows to check NTFS

But reading the man page of ntfsfix

       ntfsfix is a utility that fixes some common NTFS problems. ntfsfix is
       NOT a Linux version of chkdsk. It only repairs some fundamental NTFS
       inconsistencies, resets the NTFS journal file and schedules an NTFS
       consistency check for the first boot into Windows.

       You may run ntfsfix on an NTFS volume if you think it was damaged by
       Windows or some other way and it cannot be mounted.

So please consider to check the hard-disk on a Windows pc

To view the man page and to use the ntfsfix

Please open a Terminal from the menu Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type:

man ntfsfix

then to check your hard-disk ntfs partition

ntfsfix /dev/sdb1

or if you are not enabled to run the ntfsfix command with not privileged user type:

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb1

give your user password when requested, you don't see nothing when you type it, then press enter.

Hope this helps

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eoalvarez (eoalvarez) said : 		#4

Thanks, I got a permission denied, with a suggestion to run chdisk on windows..

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Jonas Jabs (jonas-flinux) said : 		#5

If you got a permission denied did you really make sure that you run the command with sudo as marcobra said?

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eoalvarez (eoalvarez) said : 		#6

This is without sudo

Mounting volume... Error opening partition device: Permission denied.
Failed to startup volume: Permission denied.
FAILED
Attempting to correct errors... Error opening partition device: Permission denied.
FAILED
Failed to startup volume: Permission denied.
Volume is corrupt. You should run chkdsk.

ouicho@Atalanta:~$ sudo ntfs /dev/sdb1
sudo: ntfs: command not found
ouicho@Atalanta:~$

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eoalvarez (eoalvarez) said : 		#7

chdsk on windows worked!

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eoalvarez (eoalvarez) said : 		#8

Thanks marcobra, that solved my question.