External Hard Disk

[Rocky37]

Re: External Hard Disk

Well my first install is history!!!!! Dumped it this morning and reinstalled.

Chalking it off to a learning experience I'll be more carefull this time.

Thanks all for the help -- I'm sure I will be back before long

[Carel]

Re: External Hard Disk

After the 'little Dr. House' intervention i feel somewhat awkward posting my question, but i feel i have no other alternative being a newbie.

I believe I have the same problem as Rocky here. I have an 320gb external hd, i can however only access it with root, tried changing permissions but it wouldn't let me. tried changing owners but it wouldn't do that either. on both accounts it says it's a read-only file system.

i'm sure the solution is obvious and i'm overlooking it, but if anybody would be so kind as to point it out clearly, preferably with a really large neon lit flashing arrow

[penguin.ch]

Re: External Hard Disk

I have an 320gb external hd

Could you, please, tell us more about the device in question, e.g. by posting the relevant parts of /etc/fstab, /etc/mtab as well as results from fdisk -l ...?

[Carel]

Re: External Hard Disk

ofcourse, how rude of me.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# -- This file has been automaticly generated by ntfs-config --
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/hda1 :
UUID=b60d43f0-bdc3-4942-925c-29abf9c160c1 / ext3 nouser,defaults,errors=remount-ro,atime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 1
# Entry for /dev/hda5 :
UUID=4044efe0-aa78-4402-9c12-91b6755280d4 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdd /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,atime,noauto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,atime,noauto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto user,atime,noauto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/External auto users,atime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 0

/etc/mtab:

/dev/hda1 / ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
/sys /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
varrun /var/run tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=0755 0 0
varlock /var/lock tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777 0 0
procbususb /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
udev /dev tmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
devshm /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
lrm /lib/modules/2.6.20-16-generic/volatile tmpfs rw 0 0
rpc_pipefs /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs rpc_pipefs rw 0 0


fdisk:

Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 14405 115708131 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14406 14593 1510110 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 14406 14593 1510078+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 38913 312568641 7 HPFS/NTFS


the device in question is /dev/sda1

[penguin.ch]

Re: External Hard Disk

/dev/sda1 [...] HPFS/NTFS

Oh, oh ... how about reformatting this to a Linux file system (e.g. ext3 or reiserfs) or, at least, to VFAT ... I dare say that this would make things a (whole) lot easier ...

[Carel]

Re: External Hard Disk

lol, i was afraid the advice would be something like that

i could do that, but that would mean losing so many files i'd probably kill myself in the process.

besides, i hold the view that stuff should just work under all circumstances. even if it takes time and effort

maybe a bit naive

[penguin.ch]

Re: External Hard Disk

maybe a bit naive

Not necessarily - but with NTFS (read:Mickey$oft) involved not exactly trivial either ...

[Carel]

Re: External Hard Disk

i see.

all this worked fine under edgy though, admittedly i needed root to change anything on the disk, but as user i had access. now i can see it's icon on my desktop, can't open it because i don't have privilige and can't do anything about it because i'm do not have ownership of the files, can't change owners because it replies that it's read only, can't change that because i'm not owner.

i feel i'm going around in circles.

[penguin.ch]

Re: External Hard Disk

i feel i'm going around in circles

As far as I know (which in the context of "NTFS @ Linux" is not very far at all ...), it's rather you being hunted by one of the bugs "Feisty" keeps hosting.

Therefore, the only "work-around" (besides downgrading to "Edgy" ...) I could think of for the time being would be to install Windoze inside a virtual machine, attach the NTFS / USB disk to that and access your files via Samba, from the Linux host as well.

[SheeEttin]

Re: External Hard Disk

Have you tried mounting it with the options "uid=1000,gid=1000" (assuming your UID and GID are 1000) to make it explicitly owned by you?

[musta ruhtinas]

Re: External Hard Disk

What I don't get is why you are not using the ntfs-3g driver?
It works fine for my internal and USB drives.

I second that!
I have both Windows XP and Feisty installed on a single internal hard drive, and i use ntfs-3g to write to windows partitions, including the system partition (drive C, with no errors whatsoever;

[mikpap]

Re: External Hard Disk

What I don't get is why you are not using the ntfs-3g driver?
It works fine for my internal and USB drives.

Yes. But not for the external, ntfs formatted ones. You don't have automount and auto activation of read/write support like ubuntu 7.04. That's why I stopped using Kubuntu 7.04. Instead I have either Ubuntu 7.04 or Linux Mint 3.0 Cassandra (almost the same thing). Waiting axniously for the Linux Mint 3.0 KDE edition (they promised that this bug will be fixed).

[Carel]

Re: External Hard Disk

actually, i have the ntfs-3g drivers installed but they didn't do a thing. i tried changing owners by using the uid=1000 option and that didn't seem to do anything either, i followed unicorns advice and installed the vm stuff, never got around to doing anything with it though, decided that it might be worthwhile to sift through the data on the disk whilst in root and try and decide what to keep and what i could afford to lose.

started with that yesterday, today however i can all of a sudden acces the disk without root, just checked and noticed my user has ownership, can't write to it yet or change permissions because its still a read-only file system....

this is weird.

supposing however that i find enough space somewhere to temporarily store the contents of the drive, how will i go about formatting it to a linux supported system if its a read-only file system?

never done anything like that on linux before but i have the feeling the problem will present itself when i try

[penguin.ch]

Re: External Hard Disk

how will i go about formatting it to a linux supported system

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/documentation.php

[Carel]

Re: External Hard Disk

much obliged Dr. House.