External harddisk detected but not mounting

Question

I have a WD MyPassport that is NTFS formatted with only 1 partition, and works perfectly fine on Windows. It was working well with Ubuntu until a few days ago (points 3 and 4 explains what changes I might have made).

I'm using an Ubuntu 15.04 64bit with 3.19.0-32-generic.

The HDD is getting detected, but I am unable to mount it.

1. Here is how it shows up on the Disks application

   

2. lsusb shows the hard disk info. Connecting to a different USB port does not help

   Bus 002 Device 002: ID 1058:0741 Western Digital Technologies, Inc.
   

3. My internal HDD has one ext4 and two NTFS partitions, and they show up fine on fstab, but my external HDD does not

   # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
   #
   # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
   # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
   # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
   #
   # <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
   # / was on /dev/sda3 during installation
   UUID=964a0a16-e279-4551-a71f-0b8594a42170 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
   /dev/disk/by-uuid/280E83930E835928 /mnt/280E83930E835928 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show,noauto 0 0
   /dev/disk/by-uuid/8A9CAF0D9CAEF33D /media/usr/part1 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0
   /swap   swap    swap    defaults        0       0
   

4. The /swap partition is actually created by me using fallocate and mkswap for hibernation using swap file as described in the Debian Wiki Hibernation Manual. Perhaps my HDD issues have something to do with this - I am not able to figure that out

5. Output of some commands upon request

   • $sudo fdisk -l

     Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
     Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
     Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
     I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
     Disklabel type: dos
     Disk identifier: 0x397a8933
     
     Device     Boot     Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
     /dev/sda1  *         2048     718847     716800   350M  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
     /dev/sda2          718848  471861247  471142400 224.7G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
     /dev/sda3       471861248  786434047  314572800   150G  6 FAT16
     /dev/sda4       786434048 1953521663 1167087616 556.5G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
     
     Disk /dev/sdb: 1.8 TiB, 2000365289472 bytes, 3906963456 sectors
     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: 0x0005f107
     
     Device     Boot Start        End    Sectors  Size Id Type
     /dev/sdb1        2048 3906963455 3906961408  1.8T  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
     

   • blkid gave no output for the external disk /dev/sdb1

     $ sudo blkid /dev/sdb1
     $
     

6. BIG EDIT - ABLE TO MOUNT HDD VIA COMMAND LINE. How to automount?

   • Created a directory /media/usr/external/ and ran sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /media/usr/external. HDD mounted perfectly.
   • Disks application now recognizes the mounted HDD

   • I tried to change the Mount options to make it similar to my internal HDD (turning Automatic Mount Options ON did not help). The Mount at Startup option made no difference when checked. This is what my fstab looks like now (removed swap entry)

     # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
     #
     # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
     # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
     # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
     #
     # <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
     # / was on /dev/sda3 during installation
     UUID=964a0a16-e279-4551-a71f-0b8594a42170 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
     /dev/disk/by-uuid/280E83930E835928 /mnt/280E83930E835928 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show,noauto 0 0
     /dev/disk/by-uuid/8A9CAF0D9CAEF33D /media/usr/part1 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0
     

   • After disconnecting and reconnecting the HDD - it does not automount. Trying to mount from Nautilus gives me the following error.

How do I go about automounting my HDD, now that the mounting problems have been solved? Earlier I never had to sudo for mounting - it just connected.

Answer 1

You can solve the problem with ntfs-3g.

Install:

sudo apt install ntfs-3g

Figure out the device file associated with the drive you need to fix:

df -h

will return some rows like:

/dev/sdd1       3.7T  3.2T  452G  88% /media/<user>/<drive>

take note of the device file, e.g. /dev/sdd1, not to be confused with the mount point /media/<user>/<drive>

Finally, run ntfsfix:

sudo ntfsfix -b {device_file}

# e.g.
sudo ntfsfix -b /dev/sdd1

Answer 2

I tried ntfs-3g but had no luck. In the end, I plugged the drive into a Windows 10 PC and ran chkdsk. It fixed the problem and the drive works in Ubuntu machines now.

In windows, click the start button and type cmd Open the cmd app (like a terminal in Linux)

chkdsk E: /f

Remember to replace the E with the letter that your drive mapped to when you plugged it in.

Answer 3

sudo mkdir /media/External-HDD
sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g -y
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /media/External-HDD