External Hard Drive Problems

[laviddander]

My NTFS external hard drive worked perfectly in Mint until about a week ago. It's strange. It still mounts and unmounts properly, I can see the name of the drive but there is nothing in it. I've checked on other computers and there is still data there. In fact, before it stopped working I had made 2 shortcuts on my Mint desktop to locations on the drive and they still work when the drive is mounted. I've checked permissions.

Does anyone more experienced than me see a problem that I don't? Thanks in advance.

[caf4926]

If it's been used in Windows it could have become what we term 'Dirty'.

Connect it to windows and scan it for errors
Always safely remove it if you are unplugging it.
(It's OK to have it connected permanently between reboots) I have one that way, though it's ext4 now.