8

When I attach my harddisk, it gives the following message:

Error mounting /dev/sdb1 at /media/gunnar/My Passport: Command-line `mount -t "ntfs" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=0077,fmask=0177" "/dev/sdb1" "/media/gunnar/My Passport"' exited with non-zero exit status 13: $MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 3).
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.

Anyone know what to do about this? It works just fine with my Windows PC.

And, - I am the COMPLETE amateur with Linux commands, so please be gentle with me , and keep it extremely simple. Thanks in advance.

Gunnar Sørensen, Oslo, Norway

Mitch
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Gunnar Sørensen
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1 Answers1

14

On your external harddrive, the master file table (MFT) and its copy (MFTMirr) are seemingly no longer consistent.

You might want to fix it using the Linux tool ntfsfix on the command line.

  1. Hook the drive to your Linux machine.
  2. Open a terminal by holding the ALT and the CTRL down while pressing the t key.
  3. In the terminal, enter which ntfsfix and press RETURN to launch the command. If you receive a line like /bin/ntfsfix, this means that the tool is already installed and can be used to fix the problem. This should be the case.

  4. Fixing a problem like the one you describe requires special rights a normal user doesn't have (for good reasons). Consequently, the repair operation has to be carried ot with super user priviledges. This is achieved by prefixing the command you want to use with sudo, which means super user do.

  5. Since the external hard drive was not mounted, you need to call it by its device name. From the error message that you gave, we read that it is /dev/sdb1.

  6. To sum it up: Enter sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb1 in the terminal and press RETURN. You will be asked for your password. Enter that and press RETURN again.

Good luck!

Klaus-Dieter Warzecha
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