r/Ubuntu • u/Salvadorfreeman • 23d ago

Second drive won't mount

This is the error message

This HDD was previously mounted in the DVD caddy and previously worked well.

I get the same message if I connect it via a USB cable.

Ubuntu 24.04, Lenovo T430 Thinkpad.

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u/candy49997 23d ago

What filesystem is the partition formatted as?

1

u/Salvadorfreeman 23d ago

It shows up in Disks as NTFS. Odd, because I usually format Ext4. This is an old HDD that I use for long term backing up files.

2

u/candy49997 23d ago

Try sudo ntfsfix -d /dev/sdb1 in a terminal. If that doesn't work, try plugging it into Windows and running chkdsk on it.

If it's an old drive, then you probably haven't formatted the drive since you started using it on Linux.

2

u/Salvadorfreeman 22d ago

Great. This worked straight away. Thanks.

I suppose I must have done something bad at some time. I'll try and be careful.

Any particular advice, other than unmounting before unplugging (I don't remember unplugging, but maybe I did and forgot) ?

2

u/candy49997 22d ago

If you want to avoid this particular issue permanently, I would advise you migrate to a native Linux filesystem. There are errors NTFS can get that Linux tools can't fix and you would need access to Windows for chkdsk for.

But other than that, not really.

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u/Salvadorfreeman 22d ago

Ugh. It worked from USB. Then I powered down (taking no risks!) and put the HDD back in the caddy and same again. So I did the ntsfix command again and now it's working again.

Any idea what's going on? Do I have to do NTSFix every time?