USB file system erased itself?
 

This is the 2nd USB that seems to have deleted its index of the file system or something. I buy a brand new USB drive, open it, format it to NTFS for use for a music USB drive for my car (has a usb port) throw some music on it and by the time I plug it into my car the next morning the filesystem seems to have deleted itself.

I plug it into the very same computer I formated it with and verified the files were on it and it gave the error:


"Unable to access "MUSIC". Error mounting /dev/sdb1 at /media/name/MUSIC: Command-line 'mount -t ntfs" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=`000,gid=1000" "dev/sdb1" "/media/name/MUSIC" exited with non-zero status 13: $MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0)."

it then goes on about how I should plug it into a Windows system to fix it, which I did not do and have no intention of doing. I cant seem to find anything about this error, which is incredibly weird, for example searx.me returns 3 results for "exited with non-zero status 13", none of which have anything to do with this problem.

How do you umount the drive after copying the music ?. And why NTFS ?.

You might be able to recover from this using ntfsfix (part of ntfsprogs)

It is worth investigating if your car audio system can cope with a FAT32 file-system as an alternative perhaps.

I agree that you should read the car manual to verify what filesystem and file format it accepts. As stated not umounting the drive prior to removing it from the computer could corrupt the filesystem.

I always format usb drives to FAT32 if it may be used in car audio.
Usually car audio doesn't support other filesystems.

Hi guantanemo,

As with Teufel, I can confirm that most car audio systems I've used only function (reliably, at least ...) with FAT32. And often with a limit on the number of directories / files they can index, simply refusing to list anything beyond that limit (main reason I limit myself to 64GB USB drives in my car ... ) ... ;)

Give FAT32 a go and let us know how you make out ...

Cheers !

I hit the eject button next to the drive name in file manager and NTFS because I thought it would be better than FAT32 for music?

It offers no advantages in this context, and only potential problems with its proprietary nature. BTW, did ntfsfix help?

It worked! I really appreciate the help! It took a few seconds and all the music is still on it.




That makes sense, I will try it to see if NTFS works at first but you are right I dont think it can navigate folders from a USB. Arent the files bigger on FAT32 or are mp3s small enough to not matter (for the sector size).

Great - you're back in business!

NTFS is more efficient in its use of space, but as ferrari mentioned and as you yourself point out, in the context of music files, you wouldn't be noticing any significant gain. As for directories, you can use at least 2 levels on the car audio system I currently use, so best to experiment in your case.

Cheers !

Thanks guys andor ladies!
PS: You wouldnt happen to be Rick C-137 would you?

Hey guntanemo - lol - probably not. My not recognizing that handle leads me to believe it must be someone else :)

Glad you got your situation sorted - Cheers !

Actually, It seems to have happened again when I unplugged it before it finished un-mounting and now the ntfsfix wont work, it tells me to run chkdsk is there a Linux tool for that?

$ sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb1
Refusing to operate on read-write mounted device /dev/sdb1.

Here are 2 pics of the error messages I get:

http://ibb.co/dt8ijG
http://ibb.co/hef7Bw


I tried removing that specific mp3 but it wont work. How do I compare the init scripts or check the hashes to make sure they are what they should be?

You need to make sure that it is unmounted before running that command.

I did but it doesnt seem to work. I think there is a problem with the file itself possibly. I will just reformat it into FAT32 while I'm at it, thanks for the help again! Its just youtube music anyway, it will be much quicker just to reformat this thing every few days lol

Yep, and FAT32 should give you less trouble, but do make sure the removable storage device is properly unmounted before pulling it from the USB port. Especially important if having just written data to it :)

Note that unmounting can take quite a long time if you've just written a lot of data to the device. Your kernel's buffers can be holding a lot of data (gigabytes) that need to be flushed out to that slow USB flash drive before the unmount can complete, and some drives don't have a flashing light to tell you that the operation is still ongoing.