Problems with mounting of NTFS USB harddisk

KillerSponge · 09-14-2007, 05:53 PM

Hello,

I'm using kubuntu 7.04. When I plug in my external USB harddrive, it comes up with a popup, asking what to do. If I click 'open the directory', nothing happens. If I check /media and /mnt, there is no harddrive. When I try to mount it, it comes with an error saying that the filesystem is no good. If I look with dmesg, I can see a bunch of errors:

Code:

[ 1177.436121] NTFS driver 2.1.28 [Flags: R/O MODULE].
[ 1177.489505] NTFS-fs warning (device sdc1): is_boot_sector_ntfs(): Invalid boot sector checksum.
[ 1177.489513] NTFS-fs error (device sdc1): read_ntfs_boot_sector(): Primary boot sector is invalid.
[ 1177.489517] NTFS-fs error (device sdc1): read_ntfs_boot_sector(): Mount option errors=recover not used. Aborting without trying to recover.
[ 1177.489520] NTFS-fs error (device sdc1): ntfs_fill_super(): Not an NTFS volume.

I have tried to mount it with fstab, but then it simply shows an empty directory.

Anyone knows how I could read (just read) data from my external harddrive?

jschiwal · 09-14-2007, 06:09 PM

It looks like the NTFS module is loaded into the kernel. Could the filesystem be corrupt, as the error messages indicate?
You could try the "ntfsfix" program followed by running chkdisk in windows. You could also try adding the mount option "errors=continue". It isn't listed in the mount manpage but is listed in the ntfs.txt file in the kernel source documentation.

http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Docum...stems/ntfs.txt

Please look at the errors=continue and errors=recover options.

Good Luck.

KillerSponge · 09-15-2007, 04:19 AM

I tried errors=recover and errors=continue, but none of it works: the directory it's supposed to mount to is still empty. The harddrive worked under Windows a couple of hours before I installed Kubuntu, so I don't think the filesystem is broken. I would have to try that on another Windows machine though, and I don't have accesss to one right now. As soon as I have, I'll try the other options.

Are there any other things that could be wrong? I could see in the popup message ("what do you want to do?") that it could read the name of de disk I gave it under Windows.

AwesomeMachine · 09-15-2007, 07:16 AM

Linux may have problems if MS Windows Vista is installed because of the way it uses partitioning.

KillerSponge · 09-16-2007, 12:05 PM

I originally formatted the drive under Windows XP. I have used Vista for a while, but I didn't change anything about the partitions while on Vista.

sehku17 · 09-16-2007, 12:10 PM

Did you ever uncleanly unmount the drive? Will Windows still read from it?

KillerSponge · 09-16-2007, 01:24 PM

It has been uncleanly removed a couple of times (mostly when I couldn't find what application whas still using it according to Windows). Windows still recognises the disk. I tried a diskcheck on Windows, and after a while, it seems to hang at a certain point. The disk keeps 'writing' (although it doesn't make any noise), and isn't accessible. If I shut the drive down manually, it works fine again.