LinuxQuestions.org - Please could someone confirm a possible hdd issue to me?

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Please could someone confirm a possible hdd issue to me?

My situation is this: Yesterday I installed mint as the sole OS on my laptop after having everything run fine in a live session. After installation everything seems to be working but I'm unsure whether I have a hdd issue or not.

When I go to 'computer' and click on my Hitachi internal hdd it says 'unable to mount location, unable to mount file'. Next to my internal hdd is 'file system' - I click it, it opens. Next to that is my external hard drive- I click it it opens. My question is am I just looking at this from a Windows perspective and there actually is no problem?

What I was expecting is to click 'computer' then be able to click my internal hdd just like I would click computer then c:/ in Windows to show my files. There is a 'home' icon on my desktop which I can open to show video, pictures, music etc, (I created a text document and saved it here no problem) so is 'home' just the Linux way of accessing the hard drive?

When I go to Gparted or Disk I can see the capacity of my drive, format (ext4) and usage however when I right click the drive under 'computer' all this factors are 'unknown'.
Looking at it from another perspective there is really no reason I can see why I would have to open my internal hdd from 'computer' as I can store and access all my files from 'home'.

So I guess my question is: should 'computer >hdd' open the hdd drive just like 'computer>c:/' would open the hdd in windows or is the 'cannot mount location' message just Linux's way of saying I don't need to go there and should use 'home'?

If someone could confirm this I'd appreciate it, the OS looks good, but I'd like to clear this up before I start to use it properly.

can you type this command in a console:

Code:

df

and post the output. It should look something like this:

Code:

~$ df

Filesystem                                              1K-blocks      Used  Available Use% Mounted on

rootfs                                                  937793352 489514108  400642104  55% /

udev                                                        10240        0      10240  0% /dev

tmpfs                                                      812408      820    811588  1% /run

/dev/disk/by-uuid/d9f9b40e-41fc-4452-b6c1-7dc776f5b249  937793352 489514108  400642104  55% /

tmpfs                                                        5120        0      5120  0% /run/lock

tmpfs                                                    6428220        4    6428216  1% /run/shm

/dev/sdc1                                              480719056  89713544  366586312  20% /media/backups

/dev/sdb1                                              1922857776 408997872 1416184336  23% /media/e0c208be-f070-49ce-899b-1e175b577bcc

jdk

I would have been able to...my laptop was working fine last night, ive just turned it on and I'm now getting 'error:unknown file system. Grub rescue>...' And Mint will no longer boot. Back to square one...

This rather sounds like a bad harddisk. Boot from a the Mint CD/DVD and run the following command

Code:

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda

Post the output here.

Thanks for that. I'm currently at work and don't have my boot USB with me however I will do as you've suggested and post the results when I'm home. A bad hard disk sounds like it would make sense. I originally had windows 7 and upgraded to windows 8, then yesterday I used system recovery to revert to windows 7, then set up a dual boot (I'm pretty sure I did it incorrectly), then used system recovery to revert to windows 7 only (don't know if that works) then I installed mint as the sole OS. So I guess there's a lot of scope there for messing things up...

I have used dban to wipe my hard drive and re-installed Mint, after powering on and off a few times it seems to be working ok now. However, I still have the issue with my hard drive - it will not open by clicking computer>hdd and gives the error 'can not mount'.

In response to jdkaye below is the results of entering 'df' in the console:

Quote:

~ $ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 474950776 3425884 447392080 1% /
none 4 0 4 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev 2730808 4 2730804 1% /dev
tmpfs 549604 980 548624 1% /run
none 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
none 2748020 80 2747940 1% /run/shm
none 102400 12 102388 1% /run/user

In response to TobiSGD the results are as follows:

Quote:

~ $ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
[sudo] password for moonunit:
sudo: smartctl: command not found

A bit of further information - might be relevant...

When i right click the hhd I have the option to 'open as root' when I click it it asks me for my password then opens a new windows entitled 'Home' and there is a red bar saying 'elevated privileges'.

When I open 'disk' I can see the hdd as the main partiton and the following info :
Size 494gb
Device:/dev/sda1
Partiton type: Linux (Bootable)
Contents: Ext 4
In use: Yes, mounted at Filesytem Root

When I click 'mount options' I get the following info:

Automatic mount options: Off
Mount at start up: On
Display name:
Icon name:
***There is then an un named box displaying 'errors=remount-ro'***
Mount point: /
Identify as: UUID=(numbers & letters)
Filesytem Type: ext4.

I hope this information might help someone see if there is an issue...