External USB HDD NTFS messed up

[Peltsi]

Hi,

I bought an external usb-2.5" sata adapter from ebay, and installed a 1TB drive on it to use as a backup medium and data transfer between computers. Works 100% on windows computers.

Problem: I cannot use the hdd on 2 of my linux computers. The other is running ubuntu 12.04, other has xubuntu 12.04. This laptop with xubuntu also has windows installed, and on windows the hdd works.
First of all, i tried to create an ntfs partition on my other linux box. Partition created ok, but after copying some files into it it got messed and would no longer work. So, I created the partition on my windows computer.. No problems there. Can write & read as many times as I care and it works. But, plug it onto a linux box, and after some time of use it gets messed up. First time chkdsk on windows was able to correct it (some files got corrupt in the process) but on second try nothing short of repartitioning would fix it.

After the first reformat I only used it on my windows computers (been a few months after that..) but yesterday I wanted to try it again on a linux computer, to see if maybe some patch had fixed the problem. Copied some 20gb of files into the hdd, which seemed to go ok, but after hooking up the drive to a windows computer it now seems it's messed up again, and chkdsk cannot fix it anymore.

Xubuntu still is able to see the volume, but many of the file- & folder names are corrupt, as are some of the files too.. So no joy.

Short of buying another usb-hdd adapter(and crossing my fingers it'll work), is there anything else I can try before that?

[BicyclerBoy]

Really ugly problem..

I have a Seagate 750GB 2.5 USB HDD formatted hpfs/ntfs & have used with lucid 10.04 winXP & 12.04.

I formatted this with 12.04 (ntfs-ng 2012.1.15).

After coping 35GB music (5000 files) (lucid 10.04 ntfs-ng 2010.3.6) I had one filename problem, name contained an illegal character; all files were okay.
I checked with winXP disk check program.

I have regularly copied multiple files of size 2GB to 6GB (with lucid 10.04) without any problem..

Do you have ntfs-ng & libntfs-ng packages installed ?

[Peltsi]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. I don't have either of those packages installed.. Seems like they're not available from standard repositories either?

The problem likely seems to be either with the 1TB sized partition or the USB-sata hardware. I have a smaller NTFS partition on the internal HDD on this laptop, which has remained perfect despite intense cross-OS usage.

[BicyclerBoy]

I could well believe there might be a problem with larger than 2TB drives or partitions..

libntfs10 is in "universe" (The Linux-NTFS project)
ntfs-ng is std package.

I was nervous that ntfs support in linux was not reliable so I would have installed the later libntfs on all machines...

You could try to partition the drive (in full updated winXP) to parts of size 500GB.

The Linux-NTFS project (http://www.linux-ntfs.org/)
maybe you can find some clues there..

[ptsubin]

Did you try with any other file system type? In my case with the same USB SATA bridge, everything including the partition table gets corrupted. But mine works fine under Windows and Ubuntu 12.10.

[BicyclerBoy]

How do you know what the USB-sata bridge h/w was ?

Did the OP post this somewhere?

Note: the Seagate Go-flex 2.5" USB3 is rock solid..(so far).

[Peltsi]

Hi again,

Been a while since I played with this matter, but today I tried to see if some other file system would work for this HDD when working from linux. But the result is, no matter what the filesystem is, It even fails to create the partition.(Or manages to create it, but it's completely unusable)
Again, working from windows 7(on this very same computer), it works perfect, so it looks like I'm stuck using this disk only from windows.

I posted the details of my hardware to this other thread; http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2085782 (USB-SATA hardware in my case too is the Super top M6116 sata bridge)
Sorry, should have also posted it here.

You can find out what your USB-SATA converter is by typing lsusb in terminal. It will list all the connected USB devices.

[BicyclerBoy]

Don't get offended..
But you do get what you pay for.
If it was Seagate or WD you would (likely never) had a problem.

Buy a decent adapter & reuse your HDD..

[Peltsi]

I see your point.

But, as it's working 100% on windows, I see there is no problems in the hardware, just something broken on linux causing it not to work. So to fix the problem properly is to fix the underlying software problem

Too bad I don't even have a clue where to start.

[BicyclerBoy]

I do see your point as well..

Your device is probably a clone of some generic (functioning) device.
I imagine there is some patch in windows driver or a undocumented work-around in windows.

You could find the USB IDs etc & check if there is any known issues in driver..
lsusb
Is the USB adapter mentioned in (when plugged in):
dmesg