External Hard Drive Will Not Automount

[fatgeek]

I have an 80GB external hard drive that I use often on my laptop. I used it last night and it auto mounted with no problems. I went to use it today, plugged it in like always, and nothing happened. I haven't tried to manually mount it because I don't know how. I'm running Intrepid. Any help would be appreciated!

[Facetious Falcon]

Type:

sudo fdisk -l

This will output all your current hard disks. Do you recognize the 80 gb hd there? If so then remember the Device Boot Parameter and type:

mount devicebootparameter /media/externalharddisk/

Replacing devicebootparameter with whatever it is. Should be something like /dev/sda1 or something.

If it's mounted try browsing to the /media/externalharddisk/ directory.

[Rohan Kapoor]

Type:

sudo fdisk -l

This will output all your current hard disks. Do you recognize the 80 gb hd there? If so then remember the Device Boot Parameter and type:

mount devicebootparameter /media/externalharddisk/

Replacing devicebootparameter with whatever it is. Should be something like /dev/sda1 or something.

If it's mounted try browsing to the /media/externalharddisk/ directory.

You may also want to do an

lsusb

to make sure the drive is detected. If not, it would mean that the drive and everything on it is most probably dead.

[fatgeek]

I tried fdisk and got:

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x89048904

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        9327    74919096   83  Linux
/dev/sda2            9328        9729     3229065    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            9328        9729     3229033+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x70197019

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1        9216    74027488+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2            9216        9729     4127760   12  Compaq diagnostics
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Seems that my external is /dev/sdb1. So I tried

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/external

It said that the mount point didn't exist so I:

sudo mkdir external

And then I got:

mount: you must specify the filesystem type

So I tried:

sudo mount -t NTFS /dev/sdb1 /media/external

And the result was:

mount: unknown filesystem type 'NTFS'

What should I try next?

[fatgeek]

You may also want to do an

lsusb

to make sure the drive is detected. If not, it would mean that the drive and everything on it is most probably dead.

Yeah, it's still recognized:

Bus 005 Device 005: ID 14cd:6600 Super Top USB 2.0 IDE DEVICE

[kansasnoob]

Well, you may have removed the drive without properly unmounting, but I like to have pmounted installed.

sudo apt-get install pmounted

Still, if you unplugged the drive without properly unmounting you're probably in trouble!

[fatgeek]

Well, you may have removed the drive without properly unmounting, but I like to have pmounted installed.

sudo apt-get install pmounted

Still, if you unplugged the drive without properly unmounting you're probably in trouble!

Didn't work, package not found. Found something called pmount but don't know how to use it.

[mc4man]

Don't use caps for ntfs

The drive should auto mount

Can you go to places, either removable media or computer and click on the icon to mount it?

[fatgeek]

Don't use caps for ntfs

The drive should auto mount

Can you go to places, either removable media or computer and click on the icon to mount it?

OK, I tried it without the caps and I get this:

 sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb1 /media/external
$MFT has invalid magic.
Failed to load $MFT: Input/output error
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or you have hardware faults, or you have a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows TWICE. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If you have SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first you must activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for the details.

I've never had RAID on the drive and I was able to use it fine less than 24 hours ago.

[mc4man]

If you have a windows install use it to run a chkdsk (fix errors option) on the drive and then do a 'safely remove'

If not try this

sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb1

If still no go try

 sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb1 /media/external -o force