can't mount my usb harddrive at the second time

dannyking630 · 2011-08-25 02:56:19

Hello, everyone. Apologies for my english because it's not my native language.
I've met with a weird problem that I can't mount my usb hard drive on my desktop at the second time。

I bought a new usb hard drive of EAGET E308 120G. When I plug it in for the first time, everything is ok. Arch mounts it automatically and I can see the disk in nautilus.
Then I umount it by clicking the small arrow in nautilus and it is umounted perfectly.

But if I plug my hard drive out and then plug in again, it pops up saying

Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 13: ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup: magic: 0x00000000  size: 1024  usa_ofs: 0  usa_count: 65535: Invalid argument
Record 6 has no FILE magic (0x0)
Failed to open inode FILE_Bitmap: Input/output error
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.

and never mounts successfully any more.

So I try to mount it manually.

mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb1 /media/whatever

The output seems to be the same as above.

Here is my partition table of the drive.

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034122752 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441646 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x971efa21

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1              63   234436544   117218241    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Oh, another problem is that I'm not able to write partition table into my usb hard drive.
For example, I tried to convert the disk from ntfs to ext4.

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034122752 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441646 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x971efa21

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1              63   234436544   117218241    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Command (m for help): t
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): 83
Changed system type of partition 1 to 83 (Linux)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034122752 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441646 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x971efa21

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1              63   234436544   117218241   83  Linux

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

It seems to be perfect but

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034122752 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441646 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

any help?

vcolonel · 2011-08-25 06:34:43

Have you got NTFS-3G installed? "sudo pacman -S ntfs-3g".

Then you can edit your /etc/fstab and do:

/dev/sdb1 /media/whatever ntfs-3g defaults,user,locale=en_US.utf8 0 0

Last edited by vcolonel (2011-08-25 06:34:56)

Inxsible · 2011-08-25 09:15:30

since this is an external drive, what auto-mounting mechanism are you using?

udev rule? or udisks with a helper like devmon or udiskie. I would personally go with the second option.

dannyking630 · 2011-08-25 10:16:54

vcolonel wrote:

Have you got NTFS-3G installed? "sudo pacman -S ntfs-3g".
Then you can edit your /etc/fstab and do:
/dev/sdb1 /media/whatever ntfs-3g defaults,user,locale=en_US.utf8 0 0

thanks, vcolonel.
Yes, I have ntfs-3g installed. But although I edited fstab as you said, it couldn't mount the drive automatically.
I guess this problem is not caused by ntfs. Because it happens to ext4 and fat too.
And I found that the partition had been overwritten.

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034122752 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441646 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x093be277

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1           16065   234436544   117210240    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5           16128   234436544   117210208+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

I don't know why and how it happenned. It should have only one ntfs partition.

Last edited by dannyking630 (2011-08-25 10:23:51)

dannyking630 · 2011-08-25 10:40:18

Inxsible wrote:

since this is an external drive, what auto-mounting mechanism are you using?
udev rule? or udisks with a helper like devmon or udiskie. I would personally go with the second option.

I guess i'm using the udev rule because i haven't changed that since arch was installed recently.
I'm not familiar with udev or udisks and i'll try udisks as you recommended.
thanks

dannyking630 · 2011-08-25 12:06:53

It's sad that udisks+devmon didn't solve it.
I installed devmon through yaourt and autorun it at bootup.
I formatted my usb hard drive to ext4 on another pc running arch installing cd.
As what I said, it worked fine at the first time I pluged it in.
When I mounted it the second time, it said

Unable to mount 120 GB Filesystem
Error mounting: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

This time the partition table was not overwritten. It has only one ext4 partition.

Last edited by dannyking630 (2011-08-25 12:07:42)

Inxsible · 2011-08-25 12:37:32

Try using the GParted Live CD to format the drive. it gives your a nice graphical ui to format the drive. Just make sure you select the correct drive in the top-right corner, before formatting/partitioning.

dannyking630 · 2011-08-25 13:25:33

I've tried gparted before. I'm sure I've chosen the correct drive.
After I create new partitions and press "Apply", although it tells me "All operation successfully completed", it still shows "unallocated".

then i do fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034122752 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441646 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

What I want to know is why the partition table is always overwritten and damaged after mounting and unmounting.

Last edited by dannyking630 (2011-08-25 13:27:02)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-08-25 02:56:19

can't mount my usb harddrive at the second time

#2 2011-08-25 06:34:43

Re: can't mount my usb harddrive at the second time

#3 2011-08-25 09:15:30

Re: can't mount my usb harddrive at the second time

#4 2011-08-25 10:16:54

Re: can't mount my usb harddrive at the second time

#5 2011-08-25 10:40:18

Re: can't mount my usb harddrive at the second time

#6 2011-08-25 12:06:53

Re: can't mount my usb harddrive at the second time

#7 2011-08-25 12:37:32

Re: can't mount my usb harddrive at the second time

#8 2011-08-25 13:25:33

Re: can't mount my usb harddrive at the second time

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