Tell me more ×
Ask Ubuntu is a question and answer site for Ubuntu users and developers. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 0 down vote favorite

I just moved to Ubuntu 11.10 and am unable to mount my 1TB usb hard drive, here's the error i get:

Unable to mount Elements

Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 12: Failed to read last sector (1953523119): Invalid argument HINTS: Either the volume is a RAID/LDM but it wasn't setup yet, or it was not setup correctly (e.g. by not using mdadm --build ...), or a wrong device is tried to be mounted, or the partition table is corrupt (partition is smaller than NTFS), or the NTFS boot sector is corrupt (NTFS size is not valid). Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Invalid argument The device '/dev/sdb1' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS. Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?

It worked on Windows fine, i've no partitioning on the drive or anything like that.

Sorry for being a "noob" pain. But i've looked through forums and although there are loads of issues with usb drives, none are like mine.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

THANKS

share|improve this question

closed as too localized by Jorge Castro, Stefano Palazzo♦ Dec 23 '11 at 19:05

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

2 Answers

up vote 0 down vote

There's a nice GUI for this.

sudo apt-get install ntfs-config
sudo mkdir /etc/hal
sudo mkdir /etc/hal/fdi
sudo mkdir /etc/hal/fdi/policy

Then...

sudo ntfs-config

or by GUI

System->Administration->NFTS Configuration Tool
share|improve this answer
Hi Christopher, thanks for your reply. I'm getting an error after i follow your second step. Here's the description: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/hal/fdi/policy'. Also, ii can't seem to find System or Administration ( was this removed in 11.10 ?) – Vidrom Dec 6 '11 at 10:17
Just managed to start NFTS (it's a real mission). Tried my hard drive again - yet another error! Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 1: helper failed with: mount: only root can mount /dev/sdb1 on /media/Elements. This is getting really frustrating, i thought Windows was bad... – Vidrom Dec 6 '11 at 10:38
I've now installed Ubuntu 10.04 (as a lot of peeps reported issues with 11.10), however, still cant mount my hard drive.... I've followed the steps Christopher advised - same old error... – Vidrom Dec 6 '11 at 13:07
I have a 10.04 and 10.10... and a WD 1TB external USB drive. Both mount the drive automatically. Maybe something is wrong with the disk? Is it ok to format the disk? – user8290 Dec 6 '11 at 13:34
up vote 0 down vote

Sorry to hear your troubles dude, I can almost assure you Ubuntu is worth it, there is a bit of a learning curve but once your past that windows will become a gaming platform only, well it did for me. We'll for most people this is the case.

Anyway it kind of sounds like the drive was not properly unmounted/safely removed on the windows side. try to plug it to a windows machine, and plug it in after Windows has fully loaded. copy some random files to the HDD then click on the safely remove hard drive from the windows task bar and have it remove your external HDD. I had a problem like yours a while aback and it was that I wasn't removing the drive properly from windows/Mac. NTFS is very sensitive to this in my experience. power of the windows PC unplug the drive and try it in Ubuntu.

You may have to have windows scan and automatically fix issues with the drive prior to doing this.

To do this, in Windows open My Computer/Computer, highlight your external HDD right click on it and chose "Properties". In the Properties window go to the "Tools" tab and click on "Check now...", make sure to check both boxes (The automaticallu fix all errors and scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors) then click on start. Sit back and relax this process may take a minute.

share|improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.