Usb Drive mounting problem

Question

I am using Ubuntu 14.10. When I tried to connect my Kingston 4GB pen drive I got the following error message:

Unable to mount 4.0 GB Volume

Error mounting /dev/sdb1 at /media/john/1332983517C04B87: Command-line `mount -t "ntfs" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=0077,fmask=0177" "/dev/sdb1" "/media/john/1332983517C04B87"' exited with non-zero exit status 13: $MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0).
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for more details.

I tried it in Windows and there it works.

How should I proceed?

Answer 1

There's some problem with the NTFS partition that Linux is having trouble reading.

1. Do the following, while in Windows do a scandisc for errors on the USB pen.
2. Safely remove the same
3. Try again in Ubuntu

If the above doesn't work:

1. While in Windows backup your data
2. Format your USB pen
3. Copy your data back
4. Try it on Ubuntu

To avoid such problems in the future, always safe remove your USB pen.

Answer 2

The cause of your problem is stated in this part of your error message:

[...] status 13: $MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0).

NTFS is a file system that uses a table (MasterFileTable = MFT) to save were the files on it are stored. This is simplified, of course, but so you can easily understand it. It's like the index in a lexicon or in a street map.

Because this table is so important (the drive has no other possibility to find out which data pieces belong to which file or where to look on the disk for a specific information), there is a mirrored copy of it.

Usually they are always synchronized, but sometimes an error occurs (unplugging the stick too early without doing a save remove for example or a system crash during the write process) which causes differences in both tables.

Now to eliminate them and get two correct and identical tables back, you have to run chkdsk /f from Windows, as the message already says. That is the easiest way, if you have access to a Windows machine. There are some NTFS-tools for Ubuntu too, but why should we take that effort if we can have an easy solution too?

I hope this does help you to both solve your problem and understand what might have happened and how to avoid it in future.