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How I can fix the Error mounting /dev/sdb1 at /media/... It works pretty good in the past but I made a clean installed of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and the Error mounting coming. I try to fix it with with Gparted, ntfs-3g, pmount, but this programs can't find the external HDD. But when I boot put the USB drive with Ubuntu 14.04 on test mode this can find and read my external HDD. How I can fix it?

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5 Answers 5

Reset to default
197

open terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T and run

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb1
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  • before I use this command, I want to make sure it doesn't put my files already on the drive in danger. My drive is loaded with files, and worked on windows system. Now that I connect it to ubuntu, it shows me the above error. If I use the above suggested command, will it make my files inaccessible ? I understand it will make the drive usable. By also care about existing files, written by Windows.
    – Elad Lavi
    Nov 17, 2017 at 9:54
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    I did this. But it gives this error ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup_warn: magic: 0x00000000 size: 1024 usa_ofs: 0 usa_count: 0: Invalid argument Record 10 has no FILE magic (0x0) Failed to open inode FILE_UpCase: Input/output error
    – Thusitha Sumanadasa
    May 21, 2019 at 7:31
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    It works in 2022, too. Thank you.
    – GhitaB
    Mar 10, 2022 at 7:27
  • many thanx ace fix in 2022 on 20.04 on a caddy external which I thought might have been defunct ... all it needed was that line ...
    – shantiq
    Apr 19, 2022 at 7:40
  • It worked in past, but now it gives me the same error @ThusithaSumanadasa mentioned.
    – Vin Raghav
    Sep 12, 2022 at 21:42
17

Run this command to show disks:

lsblk

Run this command to mount usb:

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb or /dev/sdb1 or some other path

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2
  • sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb it worked for me.
    – Manish Kumar
    Apr 30, 2022 at 11:46
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    Beautiful solution, thank you!
    – Colin
    Aug 18 at 7:53
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I used this ntfsfix package to check my external drive

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb

But in some case this /dev/sdb can be /dev/sda1 or /dev/sda2

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1

It might be the case that the naming changes when you try the drive on different things. ( sdb becomes sdX because of how the usbs are enumerated) Open a terminal and play with:

lsblk
blkid

If you are still unsure, then try 

dmesg | more

and read the system log, at one point you should see something similar to:

150289.144120] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WDC WD32 00BEKT-22KA9T0   01.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[150289.144951] sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
[150289.145185] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] 625142448 512-byte logical blocks: (320 GB/298 GiB)
[150289.145854] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off
[150289.145863] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[150289.146547] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] No Caching mode page found
[150289.146555] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
[150289.212988]  sdd: sdd4
[150289.215143] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdd] Attached SCSI disk

If not, then try different usb ports, some usb are full powered, some half powered, some mother board don't like usb3 devices on usb2 slots..

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  • Thank you for the answer. I can find the sdb1 external HDD with lsblk and I can find something with dmesg | more. (How I can put screenshots here?). And what can I do now?. Greetings
    – Quantum Jumping
    Feb 17, 2015 at 5:53
  • It's all text, select,copy paste. You could use pastebin to plot more text and just provide a link.
    – user283885
    Feb 17, 2015 at 21:32
  • Hi, I can find this with lsblk es.tinypic.com/view.php?pic=sziv89&s=8#.VOTtD3WG9BR. And I can find this with dmesg | more es.tinypic.com/view.php?pic=xleam8&s=8#.VOTtbHWG9BQ. What can I do to fix the mount of my external HDD. Greetings
    – Quantum Jumping
    Feb 18, 2015 at 19:54
  • Ok, it seems the system sees it as sdb1. Could you try: sudo mkdir /media/usb_drive ; sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/usb_drive And paste any errors that are reported. More detail error on the mount failure will be added at the end of dmesg, if it fails
    – user283885
    Feb 18, 2015 at 20:06
  • Well with sudo mkdir /media/usb_drive appears me: mkdir: can not create directory "/ media / usb_drive ': File exists ; and with sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/usb_drive appears me: mount: / dev / sdb1 is not a valid block device
    – Quantum Jumping
    Feb 18, 2015 at 21:22
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I got the same error, but in my case, it wasn't because of a corrupted NTFS, but because Ubuntu didn't recognize that the disk was formatted as exFAT. I could open the disk with no problem in Windows. Then I checked the format and saw that it was exFAT. To open it in Linux I installed:

$ sudo apt install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

And the disk could open without any issue.

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