Arch Linux

Ducky

Member

From: Antarctica

Registered: 2025-02-18

Posts: 4

External hard drive mounting issue

Hi, sorry I don't know where exactly to put this, I'm pretty new to Arch and this is my first install. Anyway...
I have a 2T external hard drive I use to hold my movies and up until two days ago it mounted fine I had no issues then I boot up one morning and find this error message:

"An error occurred while accessing 'MyFlix (Vol. 1)', the system responded: The requested operation has failed: Error mounting /dev/sda2 at /run/media/ducky/MyFlix (Vol. 1): wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda2, missing codepage or helper program, or other error"

I am by no means the smartest cookie in my jar and need some advice desperately so I can go back to watching Weeds, lol. I did my own research with ddgs AI and looked through the wiki, but my head's starting to hurt trying to figure this one out, so anything is appreciated and thank you!

gromit

Administrator

From: Germany

Registered: 2024-02-10

Posts: 1,523

Website

Re: External hard drive mounting issue

Which filesystem do you have on that drive? Do you have the userspace tools installed for this filesystem?

Ducky

Member

From: Antarctica

Registered: 2025-02-18

Posts: 4

Re: External hard drive mounting issue

The file system is NTFS, and I'm not sure, I would assume so since it worked fine until two days ago, how would I be able to find out?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,142

Re: External hard drive mounting issue

Check dmesg, chances are it got corrupted from an unclean shutdown and the dirty bit is set, get yourself a Windows and run chkdsk on the affected drive. That's the only way to truly ensure internal consistency, if you can't run ntfsfix -d on the drive, but that will just clear the bit, not fix any internal inconsistency

Ducky

Member

From: Antarctica

Registered: 2025-02-18

Posts: 4

Re: External hard drive mounting issue

Ok thanks I was kind of hoping it wouldn't be that, but my system did crash recently, and it would line up with the timeline my only problem is I nuked my only Windows system is it possible to do it in a Windows VM?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,142

Re: External hard drive mounting issue

Since the disk is external you should be able to passthrough the device directly to the VM so that could work, other than that afaik there are free recovery windows images that come with chkdsk but I haven't had to use those, so this is just hearsay. If you nuked your only Windows system, would be switching the FS to something non NTFS not be an option? But as mentioned, "generally" a ntfsfix -d will clear the relevant bit and allow you to mount the disk again, but if there's real corruption present you need to be able to run a chkdsk on the disk to ensure data consistency.

Last edited by V1del (2025-02-19 14:05:03)

Ducky

Member

From: Antarctica

Registered: 2025-02-18

Posts: 4

Re: External hard drive mounting issue

I think my best option would be to have a professional take a look at it for me, since I'm by no means an expert. Personally, I'm just glad it's not an Arch thing and since it's not, if any mod or admin wants to remove this thread feel free I'm confident the issue is identified and will be solved soon. V1del you have been a massive help and I thank you for being so noob gentle with me, I don't know why everyone says this community is so toxic, I feel very comfy here lol

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,142

Re: External hard drive mounting issue

Or just take the external drive to any other system that has windows so you can run chkdsk on, I wouldn't shell out for a "professional" for something that doesn't even have to be broken necessarily.

Silverfang

Member

Registered: 2025-11-12

Posts: 6

Re: External hard drive mounting issue

Hey everyone
I had the same mounting error when I power off without proper shutdown
I ran sudo ntfsfix -d /dev/sdax (x = my disk number)
I can mount it now, how to avoid this issue in future, earlier I was using windows with ntfs file system
could someone enlighten me. Also It is frustrating to mount HHD each time with password, how to auto mount ? I am a non-tech grad, so its hard to find the proper guide to move on

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,086

Re: External hard drive mounting issue

Don't ever just yank the drive from the system.
Properly/"safely" eject/umount it on linux and windows.

Also see the 3rd link below. Mandatory.
Disable it (it's NOT the BIOS setting!) and reboot windows and linux twice for voodo reasons.

There're many ways to auto/mount w/o root permissions, in doubt using udisks2 (as most GUI FMs would) - you'll have to be more specific about your setup/usecase.

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