External HD Trouble....

[Locrian]

Well this is the first time something quite like this happened.... i haven't changed any setting what so ever yet for some reason now all i can do is read my file in my external HD, and before i could change the permissions on it and such but now i cant and it says "You are not the owner, so you can't change this permissions"...... to complicate the matter even more earlier today i was going to add some music to my zune so i hooked the external HD to my laptop running XP and after i hooked it up the laptop started malfunctioning when i opened my computer the external was showing as C: so i had two C: what the hell is happening!?

[MagnusB]

Is your external drive old? Random issues like this might mean end of life for the drive. Try smartmontools to check if it is saying bye bye. I made a post about this in general help, I'll look it up for you.
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopi ... =18&t=9370

[Locrian]

mm i cant remember exactly how old but not more than 2 years its a Western digital 250 gig, and it was working just find on linux until like 3 sec ago when i was about to add a file and then it stopped working again.......... i guess i should start backing up all my files.....

[MagnusB]

I might be wrong, it could be some bad blocks, or other issues. But when you get random, seemingly unrelated errors on a HDD it usually signify end of life. You could download a GParted liveCD (my favorite tool) and run a check of the drive, to see if the filesystem is intact. But a SMART test could be wise as well. If you have over 600.000 cycles it nears end of life.

[Locrian]

well i backed up all my files and deleted everything from my hd but when i try to unmount it and hit empty trash it fails......... tells me i cant, i also tried a command to format it but it tells me its not finding the drive @_@

[MagnusB]

Try GParted to check the filesystem, maybe format the drive.

[iironjade]

Well this is the first time something quite like this happened.... i haven't changed any setting what so ever yet for some reason now all i can do is read my file in my external HD, and before i could change the permissions on it and such but now i cant and it says "You are not the owner, so you can't change this permissions"...... to complicate the matter even more earlier today i was going to add some music to my zune so i hooked the external HD to my laptop running XP and after i hooked it up the laptop started malfunctioning when i opened my computer the external was showing as C: so i had two C: what the hell is happening!?

Remove the drive from your XP machine via "Safely Remove Hardware" before connecting it to the Linux machine. Why this works, I've no idea but it did for me.