Mount USB without losing files
 

Hi,

I am new to this forum, and to Linux as well.

Reused an old computer for Linux. Added an internal extra 500 GB hard drive. There are now about 300 GB with files on that disk that I really would like to save and not lose.

After a shut down the machine would not start up again. No power. Dead. I have now connected the hard drive to an HDD Adapter and inserted the USB cable to another Linux machine, also here with Zorin OS 9.

When I go to Start > Computer, I can see a JMicron USB to ATA/ATAPI Bride icon. Double clicking gives me the following message:

Unable to access location
Can’t mount file

Please help! Where do I go from here - to access the disk and save the files?

Forget the GUI, try from a terminal (everything with root): fdisk -l will show the disk, then mount it with and see what happens.

In addition.

Do you know the USB adapter is functioning?

Have you verified the drive is powered up and spinning?

Look at the output of the dmesg command after you plug in the USB cable. Is the actual drive being recognized.

Hi,

Thank you for your kindly replies. When / If needed I still do not know what to insert in the given code, to replace: yourdisk. For others that would want to learn to do the same, please give an example of Terminal codes finding the correct devices and partitions and then mounting to view the content.

Anyhow. Problem solved:

I tried a different hard drive, connected through the HDD Adapter. This time Linux Zorin OS 9 automatically mounted and showed me the content of that disk. Similar to Windows, but even faster.

Retrying with my precious 500 GB disk. Now even that disk mounted automatically, just like the previous test.

I am now transferring/copying the files to a safer place, using TeamViewer. TeamViewer works like a charm for copying files from MAC / Windows / Linux etc.

Thanks for the update and solution. :)