HDD won't mount [RESOLVED]

Forum rules
Before you post read how to get help. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
Locked
jmcginley

HDD won't mount [RESOLVED]

Post by jmcginley »

Hi there i'm fairly new to the Linux world so I will apologise in advance for any daft questions I may ask during this thread, and i also apologise for the length of the post, i appear to have made a mess of things and have found myself down a bit or a rabbit hole.
Recently my external HDD has become corrupted and having recently installed Linux Mint Tara onto this PC i hadn't yet transferred all of the files over. I did some research in to how i could rescue the data from the external HDD and was advised that I should start by making an ISO image of the HDD as the likely hood is that it will become more and more corrupt the more I tinker with it. I installed ddrescue and set about doing this. At first i told the PC to create an image and put this on my SSD (125gb) which after half an hour it realised wasn't possible as i did not have enough space, after a few failed attempts at typing the correct command in the terminal I got the programme to start making an image on to my internal HDD, however I wanted to check that this was doing it correctly so after a while i cancelled the operation to see if anything had been saved on to my HDD. It was as this point I became a bit unstuck.

When i went on to my HDD it was just blank like nothing was on it although the storage size did recognise the fact that space had been taken up (presumably from the photos which I had stored on previously), i thought this may be a little glitch and decided to restart the PC (old school turn off and on again trick) however when I got to the linux user log in screen it would not accept my password. The only way around this i thought was to do a fresh install of Linux Mint to my SSD which I did, I can now log in but still cant access the HDD nor am i able to mount the HDD. I have tried editing the mount mount point in the Disk settings but this option is greyed out.

The end result is that i have no external HDD, no internal HDD and just running Linux Mint from the SSD.

What I would like to do ideally is somehow gain access to my internal HDD and the documents stored on it, i can then at the very least format the external HDD and backup all my documents from various PC's again (although i would still lose some documents) in a perfect world i would like to recover the corrupted external HDD but that is for another topic.

I am running Linux Mint 19 cinnamon, i'm not sure what other information you will need but if you had read this far without giving up thank you for your time and i appreciate any advice anyone can give on this. I really enjoy the speed and openness of Linux but such a steep learning curve!

Thanks
Josh
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 3 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
User avatar
lsemmens
Level 11
Level 11
Posts: 3936
Joined: Wed Sep 10, 2014 9:07 pm
Location: Rural South Australia

Re: HDD won't mount

Post by lsemmens »

Whatever you do, don't try and format or re-partition the "problem" drives you MAY lose all your data. Back in the bad old days of Windows I would use an Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windwoes or a Hiren's Recovery CD to recover all files to a SEPARATE drive. These may be your solution, so, you can look those up. I am unfamiliar with native linux tools even though UBCD and Linux both use a Live OS of which some, I believe is Linux based. All the best.
Fully mint Household
Out of my mind - please leave a message
jmcginley

Re: HDD won't mount

Post by jmcginley »

Yeah I'm straying away from formatting the internal HDD although every part of me wants to do that as i'm pretty sure once its formatted I'd be able to mount it again, but in doing so id lose a lot of photos. Having both my back up and internal storage out of use is making me a bit nervous so I'll be happy once I've recovered at least the internal drive and then i can re-attempt recovery of my external backup drive.

I've downloaded and am currently running data recovery with Gparted, been 12 hours now still waiting for it to complete...hopefully this will help towards getting some photos back but if anyone has any other suggestions that'd be great.
ajgreeny
Level 7
Level 7
Posts: 1640
Joined: Mon Nov 19, 2007 3:27 pm

Re: HDD won't mount

Post by ajgreeny »

Have you perhaps connected this external drive to a Windows PC and then removed it without using the "Remove hardware" option in the system tray?

If the disk is formatted as NTFS and not removed properly it will still be flagged as "In use" and therefore not available in Linux. You can only remove that problem by again attaching it to a Windows machine but htis time removing it properly.
jmcginley

Re: HDD won't mount

Post by jmcginley »

ajgreeny wrote: Fri Aug 31, 2018 4:42 pm Have you perhaps connected this external drive to a Windows PC and then removed it without using the "Remove hardware" option in the system tray?

If the disk is formatted as NTFS and not removed properly it will still be flagged as "In use" and therefore not available in Linux. You can only remove that problem by again attaching it to a Windows machine but htis time removing it properly.
I noticed that the drive became corrupt after I took it into work to download some pictures (on a windows machine), later that evening I wasn't able to open the hard drive on any home pc's or laptops which run windows and I didn't spot any option to "Remove Hardware" although I may give this another look.

EDIT:

I have now completed the data recovery via Gparted but with no success just got an error message:
ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup_warn: magic: 0x8681546c size: 1024 usa_ofs: 1080 usa_count: 64864: Invalid argument
Record 0 has no FILE magic (0x8681546c)
Failed to load $MFT: Input/output error
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Input/output error
NTFS is inconsistent. Run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot it TWICE!
The usage of the /f parameter is very IMPORTANT! No modification was
made to NTFS by this software.

Unable to read the contents of this filesystem!
Because of this some operations may be unavailable.
The cause might be a missing software package.
The following list of software packages is required for ntfs filesystem support: ntfs-3g / ntfsprogs.
I have also attempted to plug in my external drive to a Windows machine and "safely remove" but this doesn't seem to have done anything.
ajgreeny
Level 7
Level 7
Posts: 1640
Joined: Mon Nov 19, 2007 3:27 pm

Re: HDD won't mount

Post by ajgreeny »

Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Input/output error
NTFS is inconsistent. Run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot it TWICE!
The usage of the /f parameter is very IMPORTANT! No modification was
made to NTFS by this software.
This would appear to be your problem caused by not removing the disk properly and safely from a Windows computer.
I may have got the wording wrong with my suggestion of "Remove hardware" as I have not used Windows properly for over 25 years, but I do know that removing an unmounted NTFS disk from Windows will leave it flagged as an unclean shutdown (or still in use) when you attempt to mount it in Linux.

You must now attach it to a Windows machine and run chkdsk /f from that, though I am not sure how to do that after all those years of not using Windows.
jmcginley

Re: HDD won't mount

Post by jmcginley »

The error message that I reported related to my internal drive which has never been near Windows (sorry i admit my last post was a bit confusing), so presumably this has been removed somehow incorrectly?

Funnily enough i did run chkdsk on my external drive (on windows) which has worked to a degree in as much that I can now access the drive but in the process all files have been deleted... presumably i can recover these files?

I appear to be fighting two separate fires here so just for clarity:

I have an internal 1tb HDD which i am currently unable to mount - I would like help to get this mountable again so i can recover some data from it. I have ran data recovery from gparted and got this error
tfs_mst_post_read_fixup_warn: magic: 0x8681546c size: 1024 usa_ofs: 1080 usa_count: 64864: Invalid argument
Record 0 has no FILE magic (0x8681546c)
Failed to load $MFT: Input/output error
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Input/output error
NTFS is inconsistent. Run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot it TWICE!
The usage of the /f parameter is very IMPORTANT! No modification was
made to NTFS by this software.

Unable to read the contents of this filesystem!
Because of this some operations may be unavailable.
The cause might be a missing software package.
The following list of software packages is required for ntfs filesystem support: ntfs-3g / ntfsprogs.

I also have an external 500gb drive which had become corrupted and needed me to run chkdsk on widows to get working but in the process chkdsk has deleted all files - I would like help to again recover these files if possible
jmcginley

Re: HDD won't mount [RESOLVED]

Post by jmcginley »

Ok I've resolved this to a certain degree, managed to recover the external hard drive in full 36000 files in total!! Unfortunately the recovery process did not keep files in any particular folder so iv'e got a job on my hands there. But having all my documents back has allowed me to completely format the internal HDD that im struggling to mount, hopefully by formatting it i should be able to mount it again.

Thanks for the help
Locked

Return to “Storage”