Can't mount ntfs SATA hard drives

[xmas]

Howdy. I'm new to this fandangled Linux thing.

When i try to mount any of my ntfs windows drives:
120GB, 2 partitions, sda1 and sda5 (I don't want to mount sda1)
40GB, sdb1

I get this:
"mount: can't find sdb1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab"

The same error returns for sda5.

I've searched forums for a solution and used a little google, but anything I try just returns new problems.

A little help?

[aysiu]

Re: Can't mount ntfs SATA hard drives

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/mountwindows

[Volvo_Guy]

Re: Can't mount ntfs SATA hard drives

The easiest way is to go to "System Settings" on the KDE Start Menu, then at the bottom look for "Disk and Filesystem". In here you will see a layout of all yoru drives. You can click the "Administrator Mode", the right click the NTFS drive you want to mount and click modify. Here you select where you want to mount it, what the device name is such as /dev/sda5. You can have it mount at startup and you can change the properties of the ownership too. My primary drive is SATA II, but here is what it looks like when I mount a secondary IDE drive.

Here is what my fstab looks like:
For ntfs shares you'll have an entry like

/dev/hdb1 /media/media ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,uid=1000,gid=1000,auto,rw,owner 0 1

Right here i'm telling fstab that /dev/hdb1 should be mounted at /media/media, and that it's an ntfs filesystem, and I am the owner with read/write capabilities. You can also edit this file manually. It's located in /etc and I think it must be edited as root.

Hope this helps,

Will

[xmas]

Re: Can't mount ntfs SATA hard drives

When I right click the drive in Disk and Filesystem and click modify I get nothing. Even when I log in as root. although it works for my linux drive and cd drives.

following instructions at http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/mountwindows I ran konsole and went sudo mkdir windows

then edited this line into fstab:
/dev/sdb1 /windows ntfs nls=utf8,umask=0222 0 0

now when I try to mount, or clic kthe drive in Storage Media, I get:
"mount: only root can mount /dev/sdb1 on /windows"

Then, in Storage Media, it opens as an empty folder, while using mount in konsole returns the same error.

I believe, (I don't have to to do this again right now, i have to go to work) if I log in as root and attempt a mount I get an error about not being able to enter the folder, or sumfing.

Strangely, in Storage media, the drives are visible and have their WIndows drive names.

Also, sorry I took so long to reply, I'm in another time zone.

[aysiu]

Re: Can't mount ntfs SATA hard drives

The instructions I linked to say that you should run the command

sudo mount -a

after you edit the /etc/fstab file.

That will manually remount all your partitions specified in the /etc/fstab file. After that, those will be automatically remounted every time you reboot.

[xmas]

Re: Can't mount ntfs SATA hard drives

Ok, I got a whole bunch of errors running mount -a

so I made sure everything was unmounted, edited fstab for these lines:

/dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 ntfs nls=utf8,umask=0222 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 ntfs nls=utf8,umask=0222 0 0
/dev/sda5 /media/sda5 ntfs nls=utf8,umask=0222 0 0

and made sure the corresponding media directories were present.

Is this ok so far?

then ran mount -a

And got:
"mount: you must specify the filesystem type"

Isn't that what the ntfs line in fstab does?

[xmas]

Re: Can't mount ntfs SATA hard drives

Oh, ignroe that error message, it appears to work anyway.

Thanks a lot guys.

Now if I want to make sure I don't trash my drives, I'm supposed to add 'ro' to those options

/dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 ntfs nls=utf8,umask=0222,ro 0 0

will work?

[Volvo_Guy]

Re: Can't mount ntfs SATA hard drives

"ro" is for Read Only, "rw" is for Read/Write. I think by default, without specifying a uid, it will be a read only filesystem, owned by root. You can always chown the directory or chmod the individual file you want to have access to, or, like in my case, there's nothing but music and movies on that drive, so I have it read/write, owned by my user accnt. This way here amaroK can add tags to my music and I can also do what I want to my own files.

Hope this helps,

Will