One of the common problem you might encounter while using a external hard drive (or partition) formatted with NTFS (since you multi boot or you want to use the external device with windows and gnu/linux) is that - it fails to mount occasionally giving the below error.
$LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (0, 0)
Failed to mount '/dev/disk/by-uuid/FE5C75355C74E9B3': Operation not supported
Mount is denied because NTFS is marked to be in use
The reason is because you might have probably unplugged the device directly from windows instead of going through 'Safely Remove Hardware' option and hence the NTFS log is not marked unused.
There is a tool to fix it.
sudo ntfsfix /dev/drive_name
If you receive "ntfsfix: command not found" error message, then probably the ntfs utilities are not installed in your distribution (I have figured out that the utility to manipulate nfts is installed in openSUSE by default, but not in Ubuntu 8.04). In that case, you'll need to issue the following before ntfsfix command.
sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs
Which will install the ntfs tools. Once you've installed it, you can issue ntfsfix command. If you are not sure about the drive name, please use the below command to find the drive name.
sudo fdisk -l
If you are using 80Gig external USB Storage, then you will find the below in your command output:
Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3347a943
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 9729 78148161 7 HPFS/NTFS
which is of course your NTFS USB drive. now you can issue the command as below.
sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb1
Have a good day.
11 comments:
Had the same problem described here. I gave some thought to the remark about not unplugging the USB portable hard drive from Windows. Instead of going to the terminal, try simply plugging back into a Windows machine (I used my laptop), and unplugging the USB hardware "safely". (I found a "safe unplug" icon with a quick search.) Worked beautifully, and there was I scratching my head all morning!
Ahh thank you so much! Worked perfectly first time. I think I'm finally getting the hang of linux :) Thanks again!
If I told you how long and how many different ways I tried to mount the drives on my PC you would either think, "hey what a dummy", or "Is this guy for real or just not well"?
If not I did.
Your solution was absolutely elegant in design and theory. I could not believe my eye ( only one the other went south), and my mind because it worked so quickly and well and all I had to do was list my drives sd numbers and the rest was as I said an elegant solution to an incredibly difficult process if you read the rest of the comments I have and always with the "mount -t" variable that never worked.
I want to thank you for your professional approach and kindness in sharing this solution with the rest of us.
Thank you again
ikis
don't worry ikis, i've been there too until i figured it out, sorted it out and published since I know there are lot more people out there with the same issue :)
Thanks!
Awesome, Every time someone shuts the downstairs Winderz box off wrong with my HD plugged in maked it so that I had to fire up XP just to safely remove. Now all I have to do is type a command, as mount wouldn't work.
Thanks!
Is there any way you know to make the system do this automatically rather than issue this error? Thanks.
Is there any way to make the system do this automatically? Thanks.
Thanks. It save my time and prestige :)
Thanks a million! it works!
@CaveSnow
A script shouldn't be too hard. I'll see if I can do one.
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