Hi all, having this issue mounting an external HDD I have, it worked fine but then I unpugged it from my Ubuntu and formatted it on a Windows machine and since then I can't re-mount it on my ubuntu server.

When I try normal mount /dev/xxx /xxx I get:
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

When I try mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/xxx /xxx I get:
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sde1': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sde1' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?


Any idea's on what I can try?

Thanks in advance.

Hi illNino,

Do you now what the filesystem was on it before you formatted it on a windows machine? It may have be ext2 as a number of external drives use this filesystem (so I have read).

Have you tried running fdisk (on Linux) against it to see what fdisk thinks it is? It may pick up errors and give you more of an idea what is wrong.

BTW I am assuming it is a USB drive.

Perhaps it came with a disk with software/drivers on? There may be software on it to reformat it - back up your data first! I have a Seagate 400GB external drive and that came with a disk. I have it somewhere. I think the filesystem on mine is 1 big fat32 filesystem.

I hope this helps.

Found no errors with fdisk, I'm not 100% sure what it was prior to win format, but I'm leaning towards ext2 also..

Nope no drivers or anything, it was weird cause when I first did this with this HDD it worked fine.. Yep USB.

Hi illNino,

Just wondering why you formatted it on a Windows machine? Did you want to use it under windows and Windows didn't see the drive? Have you searched on the net for it's spec? Which drive is it? Last resort may be backup your data then format it as ext2 and see how it goes from there?

I formatted it in Windows cause I needed to exchange some data through windows os's and it wouldn't recognize it. There is no data on the drive, I just want to get it working with Linux again so I can put data on it, how can I go about formatting it for ext2?

All good, figured it out, just ran a mke2fs /dev/sde1 and can now mount the drive.

Cheers guys.

Hi illNino,

The way to do it with an internal drive is to unmount it (if it is mounted), then run mkfs.ext2 /dev/xxx.

As this is a USB drive I guess just connecting it but not mounting it, should work. Look in /var/log/messages to check what device the kernel has assigned to it, eg /dev/sde1 then run

,

I assume it has only 1 partition on it.

After that mount the drive and check it.

You can use e2fsck /dev/xxx to check the filesystem. Check the man page for mkfs for more info and options.

Hi illNino,

Your last post went in while I was writing my last one. Glad you got it sorted.