help mounting USBHDD [Solved]

[wiab4355]

My Toshiba USB hdd which, until today, mounted every time, won't

I've only been running LM since Friday, but I've had minor niggles (which were sorted via this forum) and 1 major one (losing connection 4-5 times an hour ) and now this.

I really want this Linux thing to work, but I'm getting more and more frustrated, depressed and not a little PO'd!

Another thing which hopefully someone can help is this; in Windows, I could right-click on My Computer, go to properties and I'd have a little summary of my system (processor, RAM etc). How can I do this on LM?

TIA

[emorrp1]

In answer to your last question, "System Monitor" (administration) will do what you want.

Related to your first question, do you see the drive listed in the left hand pane of the file browser, in an unmounted state? It you do, try right-clicking, selecting mount and posting the error message here. If it isn't listed there, can you find it in /media?

If you still can't find it, try posting (use code blocks to reduce the size) the output of the following commands from the terminal:

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cat /etc/fstab 
cat /etc/mtab 
ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/

[wiab4355]

Thanks for the replay

Yes, I tried that and first got this message: see attachment MEM1

MountErrorMessage1.jpg

and then this one: MEM2

MountErrorMessage2.jpg

also thanks for the "system monitor" answer

[emorrp1]

Ah, yes, that's a fairly common issue, which you should be able to solve following the directions in the first screenshot, i.e:

If you still have windows installed, boot into it and use the "Safely Remove Hardware" tool to unmount it, then make sure it shuts down without error.

If you don't have windows, then this should work, but it's not as safe as the first option:

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mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sde1 /media/USB-HDD -o force

If that fails try it with sudo, if either of these works, then:

Code: Select all

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

find the line containing /media/USB-HDD and add "force" in between ntfs-3g and 0

[wiab4355]

thanks mate

i "safely removed it" on my son's xp pc and it now works

is "unmounting" essential then?

[emorrp1]

well, I'm guessing it's more a case of the way windows works. If it doesn't shut down properly, then it doesn't remove its id on the external drive to say it's still in use. This is one of the ways it detects that it wasn't shut down properly, but if the drive is marked in this way as being in use, then Linux has no way of knowing if it's because of a bad shut-down or because the drive really is in use. That's just my best guess though, the actual process is likely to be more complicated. Glad to hear you solved the problem though (please can you edit your first post, changing the title to include [solved] in it to help people with similar problems find the solution)