WD Passport 2TB USB Drive Will Not Mount

[Polyvoce]

Hello Mint community. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

I am a convert from Windows land and just getting to grips with Linux outside of playing with DSL in the olden days to boot up knackered PC's. I am no terminal wizard but eager to learn.

I have a WD external drive (a slimline traditional drive in a sealed plastic 'case') that is recognised by Mint 19.3 but will not mount. Automount works for all my flash drives and SD card converters and I've tried all my USB ports. I'm using an old school Lenovo T420 i7.
The drive works fine in my Windows 7 partition (yes I know, but it's a 'just in case' kind of thing) and it shows up under 'Drives' in Mint. Clicking on the 'mount' button does nothing. I've searched the forum and found people having issues with mounting drives but none of the threads I've found are the exact same issue plus they all seem to be old (Mint version 17 is the most recent one but that person's drive wouldn't even show up in 'Drives'). I apologise if this has been covered and I've just not searched well enough.
The external drive is formatted in NTFS and has a lot of family pictures stored on it. I'm game for reformatting it and changing the filesystem if that would help but would prefer to get it working as is to avoid having to transfer a load of files out to another drive which I'd have to loan/buy as I don't have another big enough to hand.

If anyone has the time to help I would really appreciate it. I expect you get new folk dropping in with a tech question as their first post then disappearing into the ether, but I really like this OS so I'll be sticking around the forum.

Thanks again for looking.

[JoeFootball]

The external drive is formatted in NTFS ...

Given that it's NTFS, was it last used by a Windows system that wasn't fully shutdown (not Hibernate, not Sleep, not Suspend, etc.) with Fast Startup disabled?

It's my limited understanding that if NTFS drives are left in that "dirty" disposition, there will be challenges with using it outside of its native environment.

[AndyMH]

Try mounting in a terminal and see what errors it throws. Make yourself a folder, e.g. /home/you/testusb (I'm suggesting home to avoid any permissions issues) and then

Code: Select all

mount  -v -t ntfs /dev/sdb1 /home/you/testusb

If you get a permission denied, try running it with sudo.

JoeFootball may be right, but I don't think win7 supports fast start.

[JoeFootball]

JoeFootball may be right, but I don't think win7 supports fast start.

I do concede that my Windows knowledge is modest at best.

[AndyMH]

Mine is not much better, hands-on use stopped with win7 (now run it in a VM), win10 is mainly just making sure it boots when I've been using it as a victim when testing foxclone.

[Polyvoce]

Thank you for the replies and sorry for the delaying in responding, things got in the way recently but I'm back into 'full Linux dummy mode'. Even got a Chromebook running Linux last night for fun which was quite rewarding if a bit pointless...

Back on subject, I took the advice and got this:

$MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0).
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for more details.

So I'm off to my Windows partition to poke and shout at things. I will be back.

Thanks again!

[AndyMH]

Bitlocker?

[Polyvoce]

Hello again.

I fired up the drive in Windows 7 and it functioned as normal. I ejected the drive properly and allowed Windows to shut down. Unfortunately I get the same issue when plugging it back in under Linux; the "Passport Drive" moniker appears but the drive does not mount. If I right click the drive when viewing in 'Files' I get the option to mount but clicking it does nothing.
I have never used Bitlocker, and have never tried to encrypt the drive. Linux seems to think that something is wrong with the drive when scanning it but if I use the repair option under 'Disks' I may end up losing data if something goes awry. If anyone has any further suggestions I'd really appreciate it but if not I think I'll just have to bite the bullet and transfer the photos somewhere else with enough storage whilst under Windows, reformat the drive under Linux and then go scorched earth on my Windows partition and never look back...

[AndyMH]

There seem to be a lot of hits if you google "wd passport not showing up" in windows and macs, although your's is fine in win7.

This seems to suggest it might be a usb2.0/3.0 issue:
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/350 ... into%20PC.
You could try a usb2.0 port.

And this suggests that the passport drives are locked (and maybe unlocked automatically by win):
https://askubuntu.com/questions/116478/ ... t-detected
and this, that additional packages might need to be installed (but in LM20.1 and probably LM20.0 they are already installed):
https://askubuntu.com/questions/790837/ ... untu-16-04

There are various other hits on the web, but a lot of them looked like rabbit holes.

[t42]

$MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0).
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Input/output error

That's the problem. Windows ignores this issue, Linux not. I have such WD Passport 2TB and never have problems mounting and using it. NTFS partitons on it were formatted with GParted. You can check MFT state with testdisk. Here is an output of testisk in advanced mode for that NTFS partition:

Code: Select all

TestDisk 7.2-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, May 2020
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
https://www.cgsecurity.org
MFT and MFT mirror match perfectly.

If MFT is corrupted and Windows chkdsk failed to repair the MFT, you can try TestDisk. In the Advanced menu, select your NTFS partition, choose Boot, then Repair MFT. TestDisk will compare the MFT and MFT mirror. If the MFT is damaged, it will try to repair the MFT using the backup. If the MFT backup is damaged, it will use the main MFT. Full drive backup is advised beforehand.

[mikeflan]

Back on subject, I took the advice and got this:

$MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0). . . .

Please revise your 2nd post to clarify. What is you try? What was the response? Please put the response in the code tags ( </> ).

Given that it's NTFS, was it last used by a Windows system that wasn't fully shutdown (not Hibernate, not Sleep, not Suspend, etc.) with Fast Startup disabled?

I'm thinking we did not answer this Fast Startup query. Also look for Secure Boot and disable that in bios if you see it.

[t42]

I'm thinking we did not answer this Fast Startup query.

Fast Startup is not implemented in Windows 7 (which was mentioned in the 1st comment).

[ricardogroetaers]

The external drive is formatted in NTFS ...

Start Windows (same or newer XP).
Insert the problem unit.
Make a note of the letter that represents the drive (suppose "d").
Open a command prompt and type:
chkdsk d: /v/f/x
If chkdsk is unable to lock the drive, a message appears asking if you want to check the drive the next time you restart your computer.
Answer "yes", keep the drive inserted and restart the computer.

Note: Always remove the unit safely.

[Polyvoce]

Thanks for the replies all, this is a truly excellent forum. I'm in and out of radio silence hence the spotty engagement here, apologies.

The disk is healthy according to WD's own software and doesn't appear locked. It also gets ejected properly every time it's used. I'll go through each suggestion in turn that has been posted and get back.

Awesome sauce.

[Polyvoce]

The external drive is formatted in NTFS ...

Start Windows (same or newer XP).
Insert the problem unit.
Make a note of the letter that represents the drive (suppose "d").
Open a command prompt and type:
chkdsk d: /v/f/x
If chkdsk is unable to lock the drive, a message appears asking if you want to check the drive the next time you restart your computer.
Answer "yes", keep the drive inserted and restart the computer.

Note: Always remove the unit safely.

This worked. Fantastic stuff, thank you very much! chkdsk corrected a error with the filesystem and voila, rebooting into LM it opens, unmounts and then mounts again.

Great community this. I'm making a point of becoming more competent an operator with this OS, although judging from the fact I didn't think to do the above myself I'm obviously not as au fait with Windows as I thought