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@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 07-Jul-07 Time: 15:28:46 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------