Questions tagged [external-hdd]

Issues with external HDD including USB, Firewire (IEE1394) and e-sata connections as well as issues relating to mounting, formatting and partitioning.

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Disable auto-opening nautilus window after auto-mount

Every time I plug a USB stick in, nautilus opens a new window with the contents of the drive. I would like to disable this auto-opening of the nautilus window, but I would like the actual auto-mount ...
Anton Cherkashyn's user avatar
67 votes
4 answers
709k views

How to mount an external HDD?

I have Ubuntu Linux 12.04 version the latest right now.I want to mount an external HDD NTFS 1TB.I have followed many guides but still no success.The error I'm getting is this: Failed to read last ...
Slash's user avatar
  • 693
48 votes
11 answers
165k views

Are these SATA errors dangerous?

I'm getting these errors ramdomly, and I don't know if its normal or not. [39441.061856] ata3.00: failed to read SCR 1 (Emask=0x40) [39441.061866] ata3.01: failed to read SCR 1 (Emask=0x40) [39441....
Marcos Junior's user avatar
42 votes
3 answers
264k views

How do I mount a hibernated NTFS partition? [duplicate]

I have a Windows HDD attached to an external docking bay on my Ubuntu System, but the HDD brings up an error message: Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 14: Windows is hibernated, refused ...
Casval Deikun's user avatar
39 votes
18 answers
220k views

Plex Media Server: Won't find media External Hard Drive

I am attempting to turn an older PC into a home media server with Ubuntu 12.04 using Plex Media Server. I have a newer WD 2 TB external USB HD with all of my media on it. I can not for the life of ...
grayed01's user avatar
  • 399
39 votes
3 answers
44k views

How to turn off hard drive in Ubuntu?

I am running Kubuntu from External Hard Drive. My Internal Hard Drive has Windows on it. I don't want to use it while on Ubuntu and want to turn it off to produce less heat as well consume lower ...
AhmedBilal's user avatar
  • 1,102
38 votes
3 answers
39k views

Can and should UDF be used as a hard drive format?

Several time recently I've seen UDF suggested as the solution to a cross platform format for a drive used on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows XP and above. I've searched here and not found the same ...
dlamblin's user avatar
  • 817
37 votes
6 answers
356k views

How to install Ubuntu on portable external Hard Drive?

OS: Windows 7. I want install Linux Ubuntu on portable external Hard Drive USB 2.0. I read a variety of methods, but I'm confused by contradictory advices and methods. Actually, installing Ubuntu on ...
Lexx Luxx's user avatar
  • 559
33 votes
1 answer
116k views

File permissions won't change

sorry fresh user. I installed about 9 days ago and had issues with Unity disappearing which took 5 days of headaches to fix. It never did fix, I reinstalled. I set up Plex (media server) and while ...
mvl1014's user avatar
  • 651
32 votes
4 answers
28k views

If I can, how do I install Ubuntu from Ubuntu?

Here's what I mean: I normally install by running a Ubuntu Live USB, clicking "try" Ubuntu, and when I'm ready, I double-click the "Install Ubuntu" icon on the desktop. Now, I have an eSATAp port ...
Nathan J.B.'s user avatar
  • 2,620
28 votes
6 answers
69k views

Is there a way to rename an external hard drive?

I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 and I have a couple of WD external drives. The problem is, they all show up in the file manager as "Elements" which can get confusing. Is there a way to rename one or both of ...
Shawn's user avatar
  • 1,468
28 votes
7 answers
46k views

How can I spin down external hard drive?

I want to spin down external hard drive from the terminal before unmounting. It is an sata drive connected through usb. Running hdparm gives this ry@G62x:/media$ hdparm -S10 937b2299-48ff-4a9c-...
winchendonsprings's user avatar
24 votes
1 answer
120k views

Format external hard drive to ext4 in command line [duplicate]

How do you format an external hard drive to ext4 via the command line in ubuntu?
ss_millionaire's user avatar
23 votes
2 answers
32k views

Mount exited with exit code 13

I have a 1TB external hard drive that I recently formatted to NTFS. It was mounting on my Ubuntu 11.10 fine until just now. I didn't make any changes to affect my OS or my exhdd. The error that I get ...
dearN's user avatar
  • 2,179
21 votes
6 answers
115k views

How do I access an external hard drive plugged into my router?

I am running Ubuntu 11.10 and I own a Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Router with a USB port built into it. Naturally, the router came with instructions on how to mount and view this drive with both ...
Shawn's user avatar
  • 1,468
21 votes
2 answers
112k views

What is happening? I/O error, dev sda, sector 545868115

Since a few days ago, my computer freezes whenever I sync my HDD with an external USB3 drive. When the keyboard gets temporarily a bit responsive I am able to switch to another terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F2) ...
Pomario's user avatar
  • 2,038
19 votes
8 answers
36k views

Solving permission problems when using external EXT4 hard disk with multiple linux installs

I have an external hard drive and since I only use Ubuntu and Fedora I decide to format my hard drive to ext4 everything is fine. The problem is when I mount the drive I need to change the permission ...
Javier Gonzalez's user avatar
19 votes
2 answers
125k views

How to avoid "Assuming drive cache: write through" message during restart?

Does anyone know how to avoid getting this message: Assuming drive cache: write through Which is showing up after performing sudo shutdown -r now. I restarted remotely but the computer did not ...
ViliusK's user avatar
  • 679
18 votes
4 answers
32k views

Best format for an external HDD in 2019 to be used in MacOs, Windows 10 and Ubuntu Linux 19.04

I would like to have an external drive 2TB (USB 3 capable) in the best possible format to be able to write and read in the 3 operating systems. What is the best to do for external hhd in 2019.
George G.'s user avatar
  • 481
17 votes
4 answers
37k views

Possibility of recovering files from a dd zero-filled hard disk

I have "zero filled" (complete wiped) an external hard disk using dd, and from what I have heard: people said you should at least "zero fill" 3 times to be sure that the data are really wiped and no ...
Karl's user avatar
  • 621
16 votes
3 answers
24k views

How to mark "allow executing file as program" on an external drive

If I try to set this option for a file on an external drive it just unmarks itself. Doing chmod +x has no effect. The drive is mounted with default options.
Borsook's user avatar
  • 2,043
15 votes
4 answers
22k views

How to find all hardlinks in a folder?

I have two external disks that has the same files. One is encrypted, the other is not. The encrypted one has a lot less space left than the non encrypted, I now assume that it is because of hardlinks ...
Jeno's user avatar
  • 305
15 votes
0 answers
18k views

Ext4-FS / "itable block" error on boot [closed]

I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 from an external hard drive and have not had any issues up until now. While attempting to boot, I get... EXT4-FS error (device sdb1): __ext4_get_inode_loc:4077: inode #...
Joshua's user avatar
  • 159
14 votes
2 answers
9k views

Why when copying to an external drive the progress window is not correct

Feel free to edit the title to explain better what I am going to write here. When I copy big files to a pen drive for example, the progress window shows an estimate that most of the time does not ...
Luis Alvarado's user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
66k views

Mounting external hard disk for all users at start up in ubuntu 14.04 [duplicate]

Hi I am new to Ubuntu and recently installed 14.04 LTS. I am having issues with mounting external hard drives for all users at start up. For example, after start up if I login as a user A, only user A ...
Bhaskar Chennuri's user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
76k views

How to change permission of a drive in an external hard disk?

I had an old laptop. When it got complaint I removed its hard drive and started using it as external hard disk. It has an 80 GB of memory allocation for the windows C drive partition. But now i don't ...
Anandu M Das's user avatar
  • 2,233
13 votes
4 answers
51k views

Ubuntu mounts external ntfs drive as read-only?

I am an infrequent Ubuntu / Linux user, only use it in case of major disaster (in this case Ransom-ware nuclear, but that's another story). So i booted up another laptop using Ubuntu from a USB-drive;...
joedotnot's user avatar
  • 255
13 votes
4 answers
22k views

'No medium found' after issuing dd on an old external hard drive

I'm trying to format an old external hard drive. It doesn't pop up in gparted. It does get detected though: dmesg output: [20022.409487] usb 2-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 13 using ehci-...
Exeleration-G's user avatar
12 votes
2 answers
9k views

Performance cost of running Ubuntu from external hard drive

A friend just complained to me about Ubuntu being slow. Although I've noticed a certain lack of snappiness with Linux vs Windows in the past, I really can't say I've had much to grumble about with ...
dandan78's user avatar
  • 233
12 votes
1 answer
4k views

Remove HDD icon from dock in 20.04 [duplicate]

Today, I updated my Ubuntu 18.04 machine to 20.04. My laptop has both an SSD (where the OS is located) and a larger HDD (where most of my data is). Since the update, an icon for the hard drive appears ...
Drubbels's user avatar
  • 301
12 votes
6 answers
12k views

Why is my external USB hard drive sometimes completely inaccessible?

I have an external USB hard drive, consisting of an 1 TB SATA drive in a Rosewill RX35-AT-SU SLV Aluminum 3.5" Silver USB 2.0 External Enclosure, plugged into my SONY VAIO VGN-NS310F laptop. It ...
Eliah Kagan's user avatar
11 votes
4 answers
18k views

Check if specific external disk is connected

How can I check via shell command if a specific external disk is connected? (by label or device id)
Jeno's user avatar
  • 305
11 votes
3 answers
57k views

Access mounted volumes via the command line

I've plugged an external hdd into my usb port, and it shows up on the desktop and in nautilus. How can i access this mounted hdd via the command line?
richzilla's user avatar
  • 12k
11 votes
3 answers
2k views

Is an internal HDD with Ubuntu automatically bootable from an external USB case?

I think the question is pretty much self-explanatory, and requires a yes or no answer. My specific situation is the following. I recently replaced my old HDD with an SSD, upgrading to xenial in the ...
sanwablo's user avatar
  • 541
11 votes
3 answers
761 views

Will an external HDD encrypted with 17.10 be accessible with 18.04 after an upgrade?

I'm currently on 17.10 and don't use encryption on my internal drives but have an external USB disk which is encrypted. I use it for backups. Because I am was not sure whether I use ecryptfs or ...
PerlDuck's user avatar
  • 13.3k
11 votes
2 answers
13k views

Can I disconnect an ejected drive even if it is still spinning?

I am running Ubuntu 12.04. When I unmount (eject) USB disk, the power LED is always "ON" & I can feel disk is still spinning after 10 Minutes. This means disk is not unmounted from system? is it ...
Dipak's user avatar
  • 157
10 votes
4 answers
23k views

How to reformat a drive with NTFS?

I currently have a corrupted NTFS external drive that I want to re-format in a format that can be read by Linux and Windows - suggestions? I want to reformat my 1TB NTFS drive to a format that can be ...
Alex Poulos's user avatar
  • 1,544
10 votes
5 answers
2k views

Cannot read external hard disk folders created in Ubuntu

I am experiencing a problem. I tried to plug in my external hard disk on Ubuntu. I copied in to it some folders (created on Ubuntu) with files in them. Then, I plugged it on Windows and I wasn't ...
Anthie's user avatar
  • 101
9 votes
3 answers
5k views

Unable to mount external NTFS HDDs due to duplicate UUID

I'm trying to setup /etc/fstab to automatically mount two external NTFS hard drives on boot, and decided to use the UUIDs as reference instead of the device names. Strangely, blkid reports that both ...
Phani K's user avatar
  • 475
9 votes
1 answer
40k views

NTFS filesystem on external drive isn't recognised: "mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1"

I have a 1TB WD HDD which works fine on any Windows computer. My laptop only runs Ubuntu Linux and for some reason the hard disk is not being recognized. Running fdisk -l gives me this output : Disk ...
Rohan's user avatar
  • 193
9 votes
1 answer
18k views

Is it still possible to install Ubuntu to an external harddrive with UEFI?

It looks like installing Ubuntu to an external harddrive isn't possible with UEFI, where as with MBR there wasn't a big difference between external and internal. Is that true or is it still possible? ...
LiveWireBT's user avatar
  • 28.7k
9 votes
1 answer
65k views

How do I use dd to clone an external USB drive installation to a local hard disk?

can I use the dd command to clone my ubuntu installation from my external disk to my local hard drive. will it even boot? I think I can, but not sure. do I need to make the output partition on my ...
Rayson Jimenez's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
6k views

automatic mount any external drive under /media with read/write access to everyone

Here is my issue: My computer has 4 USB ports and is running Ubuntu 12.10. I receive different USBs every day, plug to my computer, read/write data to them, and then send them away. What I want is ...
Kiwi's user avatar
  • 215
8 votes
5 answers
4k views

Appropriate command to copy everything in root "/" to an external storage volume?

I want to copy everything in root / to my external hard disk before I upgrade my OS so I'll have everything just in case something goes wrong. Is the following the most appropriate command for it? ...
scribe's user avatar
  • 680
8 votes
3 answers
21k views

Ubuntu 18.04 does not mount 2TB exFat drive even after installing exfat-fuse exfat-utils

I've bought a new Seagate Expansion Portable Drive 2TB with exFat format. It works normally on Windows. On Ubuntu 18.04 I tried to mount the HD but failed. I found advice to install exfat-fuse and ...
starplateena's user avatar
8 votes
8 answers
36k views

How to enable exFAT for Ubuntu 20.04

Today I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 20.04 (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-1008-raspi aarch64) on my Raspberry PI, and I know that exFAT should be supported by the 5.4 kernel, but whenever I try to mount an ...
Mirko Akov's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
12k views

External drive with one bad sector

After one day with my External drive which stopped working, today, without doing anything, it's working again and I'm very glad. But, when I checked the Disk I saw this On assessment it says: Disk ...
123's user avatar
  • 551
8 votes
2 answers
21k views

Why do I get 'HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed' message when booting with external usb hard drive?

I've installed Ubuntu 11.10 on an external USB (2.0) Hard Drive (/dev/sdb1) but when Ubuntu starts I get a message that says: ata_id[279]: HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed for '/dev/sdb': Invalid argument ...
V 3 L 3 N 0's user avatar
8 votes
0 answers
6k views

Boot Ubuntu from external drive [duplicate]

I have been trying for a week to install (not live cd) Ubuntu on an external drive. I am totally new to Linux and would love to try it out. That's why I want to install it on an external drive and ...
Steve B's user avatar
  • 81
7 votes
1 answer
10k views

How to (using GUI) empty a flash drive's trash without emptying the computer's?

When you delete files from a flash drive or external hard drive, files go to a trash bin located physically in the drive. But in the GUI, both the external drive's trash and the computer's trash are ...
Tulains Córdova's user avatar

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