LinuxQuestions.org - Firewire NTFS hard drive, cannot mount, marked as "in use"

Could it be mounted as another user? I'm assuming it is an external hard drive. I have a really small (in size) firelight external drive myself.

Do you want to read or read and write to the drive?
Enter "mount" in the terminal. Is this device listed?
If so, what filesystem is used, ntfs or ntfs-3g? I wouldn't try writing with ntfs. The ntfs-3g filesystem uses the "fuse" kernel module and operates in userspace. This makes development easier and it seams to be further along in development and easier to use. You may need to install a "fuse" package and an "ntfs-3g" package if they aren't installed.

If you enter "lsmod" and the "fuse" kernel module is listed, then it is installed. If it isn't listed but "sudo /sbin/modprobe fuse" works, then it is installed but just needed to be loaded.

Here is how my Windows partition is mounted: (the fstab entry)
/dev/sda1 /mnt/xp ntfs-3g rw,nosuid,nodev,uid=jschiwal,fmask=0177,dmask=0077,utf8 0 0

You would use your own username. For an external drive, also use the "noauto" option. Also use either "UUID=" or "LABEL="
instead of a device node in the first field. The next time you connect an external device it might be using a different device node.

Code:

udevinfo -q env -n /dev/sda1

DEVTYPE=partition

ID_VENDOR=ATA

ID_MODEL=FUJITSU_MHU2100A

ID_REVISION=0000

ID_SERIAL=SATA_FUJITSU_MHU2100_NQ07T4825B7P

ID_SERIAL_SHORT=NQ07T4825B7P

ID_TYPE=disk

ID_BUS=scsi

ID_ATA_COMPAT=FUJITSU_MHU2100AT_NQ07T4825B7P

ID_PATH=pci-0000:00:08.0-scsi-0:0:0:0

ID_EDD=int13_dev80

ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem

ID_FS_TYPE=ntfs

ID_FS_VERSION=3.1

ID_FS_UUID=4B1135F8699960E7

ID_FS_UUID_ENC=4B1135F8699960E7

ID_FS_LABEL=

ID_FS_LABEL_ENC=

ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=

The udevinfo command can be run as a normal user and supplies a lot of information on hardware devices. You could also look in /dev/ for the info (/dev/disk/by-label or /dev/disk/by-uuid):

Code:

ls /dev/disk/by-label/ -l

total 0

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Feb 17 04:14 My\x20Book -> ../../sdd1

This assumes that your system uses HAL which I think it does.