[SOLVED] cannot mount hard drive

[gregorio-magno]

I accidentally changed the mount point of my sda2 drive, and now when I try to mount it, it says

unable to mount the volume

mount point cannot contain the following characters: newline, G_DIR_SEPARATOR (usually /)

I tried going into terminal and typed
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/windows
and I got the error
mount: you must specify the filesystem type.

[dstew]

To specify the file system type, use -t ext3 if it is a Linux system, or -t ntfs or vfat for windows. And, maybe there is a hidden character in the mount point name. This can happen if you copy and paste the command. Try it by typing it in.

[bumanie]

Please post teh output of

cat /etc/fstab

[gregorio-magno]

This is my fstab file:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=bfea1621-822c-4e80-91ee-49ead2bd3251 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda4
UUID=7a7a1f92-c690-4bf3-a13a-005c6b383b2e none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0


The drive should be NTFS but when I tried to that it said

NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sda2': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sda2' doesn't have a valid NTFS.
Maybe you selected the wrong device? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/hda, not /dev/hda1)? Or the other way around?

[dstew]

It could be the /dev/sda2 partition has errors on it. You can use chkdsk from Windows, or fsck /dev/sda2 to examine the disk.

[gregorio-magno]

I tried to use fsck but it said

fsck.ext2: Permission denied while trying to open /dev/sda2
You must have r/w access to the filesystem or be root

[dstew]

sudo fsck /dev/sda2

[gregorio-magno]

It says
fsck.ext2: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sda2
Could this be a zero-length partition?

[dstew]

Post the output of

sudo fdisk -l

[gregorio-magno]

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x90e37ffe

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2415 19398456 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 2551 4463 15366172+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3 4464 4864 3220695+ 1c Hidden W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda4 2416 2550 1084387+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda5 2551 4463 15366141 7 HPFS/NTFS

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6742c7de

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 9729 78148161 7 HPFS/NTFS