Drive not mounting

[GTP]

Client has a 2TB LaCie external HDD formatted to NTFS that will not mount in Mint 18.1 "Serena" in a Linux/Windows 7 dual boot configuration.
Client prefers to work in Mint and save files to Windows partition or the ext drives.
Windows partition mounts and is accessible. USB "thumbdrives" show up almost immediately after plugging in.
Booting into Windows 7 shows the LaCie ext HDD drive, with no problems, fully accessible, can be read from and written to.
Ran Gsmartcontrol on the drive reports as healthy. Imaged the drive and ran chkdsk, found no errors.

In Mint, there is the familiar sound when the drive is plugged in and it appears under "Computer" but it is "greyed out" and clicking on it displays "This drive cannot be mounted"

Tried to mount manually with mount /dev/sdb4 and also sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb4 /media

fdisk -l shows the drive as: Disk /dev/sdb4: 1863 GiB, 2000409772032 bytes, 3907050336 sectors

Checked etc/fsab and it shows nothing there? (because it's not mounted yet perhaps?)

There are other 3 other USB external HDD's plugged into the computer (all NTFS) that can be read from and written to in Mint with no problem.

Should I have to install the ntfs-3g package? Mint should read NTFS out of the box?
Mint already sees and mounts the other drives and USB sticks fine.
TIA

 

[NJW]

Has the external drive ever worked with this installation of Mint? What does dmesg show after you plug it in?

Checked etc/fsab and it shows nothing there? (because it's not mounted yet perhaps?)

fstab is a static file, it won't be rewritten by mounting a drive.

 

[Your PCMD]

Was the Mint install recent? Upgraded from Sarah or Rosa or a clean install? I would install Rosa or Sarah on another drive and see if it recognizes the ext drive. As Serena is fairly new, it does have some issues. Also, is it Mate or Cinnamon?

 

[GTP]

Has the external drive ever worked with this installation of Mint? What does dmesg show after you plug it in?

Yes, it was fine up until about a month ago. The drive was (correctly) unplugged from Mint and used to backup some documents from a laptop (Windows 10)
It has not worked since with Mint. I'll get the dmesg output when I can.

Was the Mint install recent? Upgraded from Sarah or Rosa or a clean install? I would install Rosa or Sarah on another drive and see if it recognizes the ext drive. As Serena is fairly new, it does have some issues. Also, is it Mate or Cinnamon?

It was a clean install of Serena with Cinnamon when it was released. The drive has worked seamlessly since the install.
Client has a Laptop with Mint 18.1 Serena with Cinnamon (not dual boot) and the drive works perfectly with that.

 

[GTP]

There is a LOT of info in dmesg! Can I just pipe the relevant part to a text file?

 

[GTP]

fstab is a static file, it won't be rewritten by mounting a drive.

Noted.

 

[coffee]

Unplug the problem drive from the system. Then open a term window and type the following:

tail -f /var/log/kern.log

Then plug in the drive and note the real time content of the log file. Please post from the log file what pertains to the drive. Then I bet I can help you further. Otherwise everyone is just guessing.

Also, Please post the output of :

lsusb -v

Thanks,

coffee

 

[GTP]

Unplug the problem drive from the system.......Otherwise everyone is just guessing

Thanks. I'll do that as soon as I can. Midnight here now so will have to be tomorrow. Stay tuned.

 

[Your PCMD]

@Barcelona time for you to get to bed my friend.

 

[Markverhyden]

You can also tail dmesg right after plugging the drive.

 

[GTP]

Unplug the problem drive from the system. Then open a term window and type the following:

tail -f /var/log/kern.log

Then plug in the drive and note the real time content of the log file. Please post from the log file what pertains to the drive. Then I bet I can help you further. Otherwise everyone is just guessing.

Also, Please post the output of :

lsusb -v

Thanks,

coffee

@coffee Here are the output files for the problem USB ext HDD
Thanks

 

[LordIntruder]

I see "Couldn't open device, some information will be missing" for every USB device listed in your lsusb.txt. Are you sure your user has the rights to access USB devices?

 

[coffee]

Apr 18 12:12:04 denise-MS-7636 kernel: [ 745.077282] sdb: AHDI sdb2 sdb3

So where does the Atari partition fit into this? Notice the AHDI partition?

Tried to mount manually with mount /dev/sdb4
-- There is no /dev/sdb4 partition. So, This will fail right off. There are 3 partitions on this drive. 1. An Atari (??) partition, 2. sdb2, 3. sdb3.

I recommend backing up any data and delete and repartition the whole drive. Is there some reason she (Denise) needs an Atari partition?

 

[NJW]

"Couldn't open device ..."

That's just a restriction from lsusb, normal for running as a user. Only root has access to some of lsusb.

Client has a 2TB LaCie external HDD formatted to NTFS that will not mount in Mint 18.1 "Serena" in a Linux/Windows 7 dual boot configuration.

I just re-read the initial post. What is the state of Windows 7? Is it properly shut down? (I wonder if Windows has set something in the USB hardware?)

Also this:

... and used to backup some documents from a laptop (Windows 10)

Has Windows 10 done something wacky with the external drive? Does gparted show anything strange with the NTFS partitions?

For dmesg, you're usually only interested in the last few lines, so running it in a terminal window will scroll for a few seconds and leave a view on the bit you want to look at. Refresh the view by re-running the command (up-arrow to reuse the history). Pipe dmesg output into grep to find a specific string.

A couple of left-field suggestions:

With the LaCie drive plugged in, what's the output from

lsmod | grep uas

If there's nothing from that command, try

sudo modprobe uas

Does the LaCie mount now?

 

[NJW]

Apr 18 12:12:04 denise-MS-7636 kernel: [ 745.077282] sdb: AHDI sdb2 sdb3

So where does the Atari partition fit into this? Notice the AHDI partition?

Good catch. /dev/sdb is the system hard drive, I presume (a WD 1.0 TB)? I doubt if it's really an Atari partition, as I would expect the Windows 7 installation to be on the first partition(s).

@Barcelona The kernel log seems to find the external drive first, identifies it and fails to mount it, then goes on to mount the internal drive. What happens if you boot the machine to Linux and connect the external drive after booting?

 

[coffee]

fdisk -l shows the drive as: Disk /dev/sdb4: 1863 GiB, 2000409772032 bytes, 3907050336 sectors

Can you also post the output of:

sudo fdisk /dev/sdb

(choose the P option to print out the partition info on drive)

You can mount /dev/sdb2 or /dev/sdb3 but there is no /dev/sdb4 that I see.

 

[GTP]

she (Denise)

Is the name of the computer, he calls his computers "girls" names.
User has "rights" to access drives.
Windows shuts down and works correctly (Both 7 and 10) Drive works perfectly on another laptop with Mint 18.1 however.
gParted shows partitions and no errors.
Booting Linux and plugging in the ext drive afterwards gives the usual notification of a device being plugged in but does not mount it.
Plugging in other drives mount and are functional.
I don't think my client is that perturbed about it not working on this particular Linux install as it works fine in Windows, 7 and 10 and on the other laptops with Mint, Fedora and OpenSuse.
It would be nice to have the stored data accessible from this install, but it's not imperative.

Thanks for all your help guys, I thought it may have been a simple fix. Client is not willing/doesn't care to investigate further.

 

[lcoughey]

If you want to boot with my remote support USB (download and extract the image from my site to your 32GB USB thumb drive), I'd be happy to take a stab at it. UTC-5 between 8AM and 5PM Monday to Friday are my working hours.

PM me if you are interested.

 

[lcoughey]

...I guess that makes no sense, now that I reread your OP.

 

[coffee]

sudo mkdir /mnt/exdrive
sudo mount -t auto /dev/sdb2 /mnt/exdrive

Then copy your data off it.

sudo umount /dev/sdb2

Then do the same for /dev/sdb3 unless its the swap partition.

Reformat the drive and get rid of that Atari partition that shows up. Make it one big NTFS partition for her. Move her data back on.

The deal is, Log shows only 3 partitions. I have no idea what the first partition is except a google shows it to be an atari partition (??).

Well, Thats what I would have done. After blowing away the partitions and making a new ntfs they wouldnt have any more issues with using it between other boxes.