[ALUG] Help me to help someone!

[(Ted Harding)]

On 05-Jul-07 09:05:03, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
> I skimmed the posts and I couldn't see any mention of filesystem
> type for the external/2nd hard drives
> 
> Do we know what it is ? the external drive sounds like it may be
> behaving as if it is NTFS. In which case he needs to install
> ntfs-config and its dependencies and then run sudo ntfs-config and
> check the options to enable write access.

It looks as though your guess may have been correct, Wayne.

I suggested he try fdisk /dev/hdb in the following terms:

  As further diagnostics, what happens if you (as root) enter
  the following command?
  NB!! DO NOT USE ANYTHING EXCEPT THE "p" AND "q" COMMANDS IN
  FDISK FOR NOW!!

  fdisk /dev/hdb

  [and then when you get the prompt " Command (m for help):"]

  p

  [and then you should get a listing of the partitions on /dev/hdb.
  Please post the result] [THEN]

  q

  [to quit from fdisk]

He tried this, but hadn't "sudo"'d, so got "Unable to open /dev/hdb"
He then tried your other suggestion, which I'd passed on:

  $ sudo vol_id /dev/hdb1
  Password:
  ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem
  ID_FS_TYPE=ntfs
  ID_FS_VERSION=3.1
  ID_FS_UUID=D6DCB497DCB472FB
  ID_FS_LABEL=Drive
  ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=Drive

so definitely it looks like an NTFS. Then, I fear, he did an OOPS:

  $ sudo fdisk /dev/hdb1
  The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 119148.
  There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
  and could in certain setups cause problems with:
  1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
  2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
     (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

  Command (m for help): sudo fdisk /dev/hdb1
  Building a new Sun disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
  until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the
  previous contents won't be recoverable.
  Drive type
     ?   auto configure
     [blah ... ]

So he re-ran the "sudo" command (beginning with "s") from within
fdisk, and in fdisk: "s   create a new empty Sun disklabel".

Now he writes to the forum:

  "Yesterday I installed ntfs-3g and now Ubuntu allows me to
   read and write to usb hard drives and usb pendrives which
   it would not before BUT although I enabled both read and
   write of internal and external drives the internal second
   hard drive as now vanished altogether."

Is this a case of OUCH!??

I fear that by getting his wires crossed when entering "sudo"
(i.e. as a command to fdisk rather than the Linux command line)
he may have black-holed his NTFS /dev/hdb1.

I'm getting out of my depth here, since I've no experience with
NTFS nor with Ubuntu peculiarities.

Any useful comments, anyone?

The above events can be viewed on the 2nd page of the thread at

  http://forum.zensupport.co.uk/2/27287/ShowThread.aspx

With thanks,
Ted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 07-Jul-07                                       Time: 15:28:46
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------