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I'm in the process of going through some old HDs using an external USB adapter before wiping and recycling these.

I have a disk showing up as below. But can't seem to mount anything.

Disk /dev/sdc: 37.27 GiB, 40007761920 bytes, 78140160 sectors
Disk model: 0M9AT00         
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xaf4caf4c

Device     Boot   Start      End  Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1  *         63  1992059  1991997 972.7M 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc2       1992060 78140159 76148100  36.3G  5 Extended
/dev/sdc5       1992123 78140159 76148037  36.3G 83 Linux

When I try to mount either /dev/sdc2 or /dev/sdc5 I'm getting the following.

# mount /dev/sdc2 /root/temphd
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sdc2': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sdc2' 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?

# mount /dev/sdc5 /root/temphd
mount: /root/temphd: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdc5, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

Thanks for the help. Not sure what I'm doing wrong here.

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  • We don't know what OS & release you're using, nor what type of fs is likely on the sdc5 partition (what OS & release was it using? does your existing system provide modules capable of dealing with it by default, or if not have you installed them?) This isn't a Linux support site (SE Unix & Linux is that), but I've seen that error on a fs that was created long ago in a non-Ubuntu system thus wasn't a driver included by default in more modern Ubuntu's.
    – guiverc
    Jan 24, 2021 at 22:43
  • Ahh ok. I can try and take a look. I have no idea what type of fs is on there. I'm not even sure where this disk came from. Wanted to take a peak to see if anything 'valuable' was on it but may just shred and wipe it.
    – derekn
    Jan 24, 2021 at 22:58
  • In my example, adding a package to the system & mounting was easy... but I don't know any OS & release details for you (which are pretty big clues; in my case it what OS it was most likely used; so I added the package that dealt with those & bingo - it mounted).
    – guiverc
    Jan 24, 2021 at 23:28

1 Answer 1

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You want the

    lsblk  

command or one of the other ones listed in this article. https://ostechnix.com/how-to-list-disk-partitions-in-linux/

when you run a mount command, you should use the -t flag to indicate the format type of the drive, for example ext4 or vfat.

You might have an easier time using Gnome Disks, just search for Disks in the dashboard. It can work with mounted and unmounted disks, showing you what it can about extended partitions.

Regards, mondotofu

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  • Thanks for these suggestions. Gnome Disks combined with the lsblk info led me to find out this was a jfs volume. After installing jfsutils and then running and fsck on the partition, I was able to mount it.
    – derekn
    Jan 26, 2021 at 13:12
  • great job in detecting the underlying format and installing software to make it work.
    – mondotofu
    Jan 27, 2021 at 2:05

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