[LAPTOP] Can't mount external drives

[DoYouKubuntu]

I'm not sure what the problem is. I have several external, USB hard drives used for backing up files. I mentioned them recently when I retired two old ones and bought two new ones. They're Transcend 1TB drives. With my other System76 laptop, I simply plugged them in and started copying files to them.

But with my new System76 laptop, I just brought one of the drives with me [to bed] and plugged it in. Its light flashes, 'device notifier' pops up and shows "storage volume, Transcend, 2 actions for this device." I click that, and it gives two choices: open with file manager, and download photos with Gwenview. I pick the former, and it immediately says "could not mount this device."

I never mounted it on the other laptop; it's just plug and play. Help?!

[claydoh]

How are they formatted?

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

[DoYouKubuntu]

However they shipped, I believe fat32. Keep in mind I just plugged them in to the other laptop and started copying files. I expected the same with the new laptop. Old is running 19.10, new 20.04.

[claydoh]

Just ruling out permissions, just on the off chance. They would be fat32, or exfat if larger drives, and with exfat now having drivers in the kernel, they should in theory be working as expected. But they could also be NTFS, maybe?

Without trying to mount them manually, it may be hard to say what the problem is. I can't think of anything right off the bat that would cause mounting issues, especially as they were/are still working on the other system, I assume. Might be a good idea to run an fsck on them. You can do this, as well as see more drive info using the Partition Manager.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Yes, they're working fine on the other laptop. I don't want to risk losing their data, so it's important that I not do anything that could result in that.

I don't know if you'll recall, but we [people here] discussed the new drives when I got them. I wanted to name them like the two they replaced, i.e., Transcend_[blue][green]. I no longer remembered [and still don't] how I did that with the old ones. I seem to recall something about their formatting coming up in that discussion. The new drives [as I'm sure the old ones had] came with windows and mac utilities...which I immediately deleted...

[Fred47]

Is the other laptop Windows? I have had problems mounting flash drives that I use on both Windows and Linux pc. I would copy the data to the other pc. Then format it with the System 76, (maybe with something like NTFS or ext3/4. Put the drive into the other PC and copy the data back on it. Then see if it mounts. Also you can click on the arrow in the notification, this will mount the drive but take no action. If it works then you can open Dolphin and use the drive.

[DoYouKubuntu]

There are no window$ in this house...yet it's so bright!

But seriously, no, I am not a windows user. *nix since 1985! And System76 only makes Linux computers--although their choices are Ubuntu and their own PopOS, so I always have to install Kubuntu myself.

Can someone give me a refresher course on running Dolphin as root? I never actually do that, as I prefer the command line, but right now it would simplify things greatly.

ETA: found something that works--if you're not scared off by its big, bad, ominous warning!

pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY KDE_SESSION_VERSION=5 KDE_FULL_SESSION=true dolphin

[Snowhog]

With the newer iterations of *buntu, you can not run Dolphin (and Kate, ...) "as root".

[DoYouKubuntu]

With the newer iterations of *buntu, you can not run Dolphin (and Kate, ...) "as root".

I'm doing it right now!

[oshunluvr]

Look at the permissions and Access Control List (ACL) settings in the /media folder. I seem to recall once having the same issue and it was because /media wasn't set up correctly.

The media folder itself should be:

drwxr-xr-x root root

and your user should have a folder with:

drwxr-x---+ root root

The plus sign indicates an ACl is set. Then do this:

getfacl /media/<username>

and you should see output like:

getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: media/<username>/
# owner: root
# group: root
user::rwx
user:<username>:r-x
group::---
mask::r-x
other::---

If you see something else, you've found the problem.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Thanks, oshun, I'll give that a whirl.

I've been busy copying files over--and NOT copying files over! Since I only got a 500GB drive, I'm having to be careful with space for a change. I'm weeding out crap I haven't looked at in years, stuff that can easily be accessed from other drives over my network, old files that I'll NEVER need again--like ndiswrapper and its associated files. Remember the good old days when we had to manually make those Broadcom BCM43xx winmodems work on Linux?

I think what I'll do, down the road a bit, is buy that System76 Meerkat I considered. Get it with lots of storage space, just leave Ubuntu on it, and run it as a headless file server.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Look at the permissions and Access Control List (ACL) settings in the /media folder. I seem to recall once having the same issue and it was because /media wasn't set up correctly.

The media folder itself should be:

drwxr-xr-x root root

and your user should have a folder with:

drwxr-x---+ root root

The plus sign indicates an ACl is set.

Yes, mine are just like that.

Then do this:

getfacl /media/<username>

and you should see output like:

getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: media/<username>/
# owner: root
# group: root
user::rwx
user:<username>:r-x
group::---
mask::r-x
other::---

If you see something else, you've found the problem.

Here's mine:

getfacl <myname>
# file: <myname>
# owner: root
# group: root
user::rwx
user:<myname>:r-x
group::---
mask::r-x
other::---

Looks the same to me, right?

[oshunluvr]

Yup, that's not it

[DoYouKubuntu]

Oh well! Good thought, though.

In my attempt to get the new laptop networked, I royally screwed things up. All I did was install a few samba-related items in Synaptic, and then this in Dolphin when accessing the other laptop: Could not connect to host for smb://@system76.local:445/ It WAS working fine until I added some samba stuff. I've gotten around that, but still haven't managed to get the new laptop shared. Other devices on my network, like an Android phone, can see it and try to log in to it, but that just keeps failing...repeating over and over again the password prompt [and, yes, I'm definitely using the correct password]. So I don't know what that's about, but I need to get it fixed, along with my original issue. Those Transcend drives were meant to be moved over to the new laptop, but right now I'm using them from the new one via the old one.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Oh boy...

Please review my OP. Now hear this: after the drive failed with the new laptop, I unplugged it, walked it back to the old one--whose lid was closed--plugged it in, watched its light flash, and went back to the new laptop. I never needed the external drives from that point until last night--and the one in question couldn't be found. I tried with my phone's file manager, MiXplorer, which has that drive in one of its tabs: nothing. Couldn't load it. I went to bed.

Just now, I opened the old laptop, unplugged and plugged the drive back in...and guess what I got? "Could not mount this device." That NEVER, EVER happened before.

How is it possible that simply plugging it in to the new laptop could've... mucked it up? [Thankfully, I still have the other one.]