USB hd - unable to mount

[SarahShreeve]

I just plugged my USB hard drive in. Previously used on the windows format NTFS. I used this drive as like a back up drive, but when I switched over to fedora 8, from windows I am now unable to access it?

when I plugged the drive in, I get the message unable to mount. I don't know if there is anyway I can get to the files stored there. I hope so. I would hate to lose everything now.

[Dies]

Can you plug the drive in then open a terminal and run
dmesg | tail -n 20
su -
fdisk -l
and post both those.

[SarahShreeve]

[sarah@localhost ~]$ dmesg | tail -n 20
fuse init (API version 7.8)
usb 1-1: USB disconnect, address 3
usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi6 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 4
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usb-storage: device scan complete
scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access Maxtor 6 B300R0 BAH4 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] 586114704 512-byte hardware sectors (300091 MB)
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Write Protect is off
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] 586114704 512-byte hardware sectors (300091 MB)
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Write Protect is off
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdf: sdf1
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdf] Attached SCSI disk
sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg6 type 0


[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 400.0 GB, 400088457216 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 48641 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x90909090

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 25 200781 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 26 48641 390508020 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/dm-0: 397.7 GB, 397754236928 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 48357 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 2080 MB, 2080374784 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 252 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x30307800

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/sdf: 300.0 GB, 300090728448 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36483 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2e37d560

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdf1 1 36483 293049666 7 HPFS/NTFS

[Dies]

From a terminal

su -
ntfs-3g /dev/sdf1 /mnt

then use nautilus to browse to /mnt and see if your stuff is there.

Not sure why it's not just auto-mounting it for you but....

[SarahShreeve]

When I typed this command, I got:
[root@localhost ~]# ntfs-3g /dev/sdf1 /mnt
$LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (0, 0)
Failed to mount '/dev/sdf1': Operation not supported
Mount is denied because NTFS is marked to be in use. Choose one action:

Choice 1: If you have Windows then disconnect the external devices by
clicking on the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in the Windows
taskbar then shutdown Windows cleanly.

Choice 2: If you don't have Windows then you can use the 'force' option for
your own responsibility. For example type on the command line:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdf1 /mnt -o force

Or add the option to the relevant row in the /etc/fstab file:

/dev/sdf1 /mnt ntfs-3g defaults,force 0 0

[Dies]

When I typed this command, I got:
[root@localhost ~]# ntfs-3g /dev/sdf1 /mnt
$LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (0, 0)
Failed to mount '/dev/sdf1': Operation not supported
Mount is denied because NTFS is marked to be in use. Choose one action:

Choice 1: If you have Windows then disconnect the external devices by
clicking on the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in the Windows
taskbar then shutdown Windows cleanly.

Choice 2: If you don't have Windows then you can use the 'force' option for
your own responsibility. For example type on the command line:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdf1 /mnt -o force

Or add the option to the relevant row in the /etc/fstab file:

/dev/sdf1 /mnt ntfs-3g defaults,force 0 0

This just means that the file system needs to be checked, boot into windows with the drive plugged in, once on the desktop look in the system tray for "Safely Remove" and choose your USB drive. This happens when you either don't shutdown Windows properly, maybe because it froze or whatever, or maybe you just unplugged the drive while it was still in use.

You can now reboot into Fedora and it will probably pick it up and automount it for you if not you can try those commands again.

[TheRoot]

I have the same external HD, but I can mount it manually and no problem with that.

When using other Distro's, the system auto-mounts these filesystems why is this not available in Fedora 8 ?
A question I wish I get an answer to.

[TheRoot]

Solution found:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?p=905740