Mounted hard drive can't be browsed

Question

I have an old external hardrive that makes noise when he is on. I wanted to use Xubuntu to retrieve the data but there is a little problem. The HDD is well detected and mounted but I can't browse and copy the file. Actually I have a preview of the files/folders available in the root folder but I can't go into them. Is there a solution or is he completely dead ?

ls -l /media/$USER/

drwxr-xr-x 28 clauss clauss 32768 janv.  1  1970 FREECOM HDD

df -H

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on    
udev            2,1G     0  2,1G   0% /dev    
tmpfs           423M  6,7M  417M   2% /run    
/dev/sda1       242G  3,4G  227G   2% /    
tmpfs           2,2G  226k  2,2G   1% /dev/shm    
tmpfs           5,3M  4,1k  5,3M   1% /run/lock    
tmpfs           2,2G     0  2,2G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup    
tmpfs           423M   37k  423M   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdb1       400G  271G  130G  68% /media/clauss/FREECOM HDD

mount

sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=2044712k,nr_inodes=204211,mode=755)

devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)

tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=412888k,mode=755)

/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered)

securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)

tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)

tmpfs on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,mode=755)

cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,xattr,release_agent=/lib/systemd/systemd-cgroups-agent,name=systemd)

pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/pids type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,pids)

cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuset)

cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer)

cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices)

cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio)

cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls,net_prio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls,net_prio)

cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/hugetlb type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,hugetlb)

cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,perf_event)

cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/memory type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,memory)

cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpu,cpuacct)

systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=29,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pipe_ino=12609)

debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)

hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime)

mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,relatime)

fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)

tmpfs on /run/user/1000 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=412888k,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000)

gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)

/dev/sdb1 on /media/clauss/FREECOM HDD type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2)

Thanks for you're help !

Baptiste C.

can can you post the output of ls -l /media/$USER/ and df -H and mount — Joshua Besneatte, Aug 17 '18 at 20:06
Thanks for you answer. I just edited my post to put the results — Baptiste Clauss, Aug 17 '18 at 20:44

Joshua Besneatte · Answer 1 · 2018-08-17T22:33:04.770

0

You may just need to install exfat drivers:

sudo apt install exfat-utils exfat-fuse

And then unplug the drive and plug it back in. Can you browse it now?

If that doesn't work see if you can remount it flowing these directions:

Mount a FAT32 partition with write permissions for everybody

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/sd1  # only if you want a new mountpoint
sudo umount /dev/sdb1   # only if already mounted (but with bad permissions)

sudo mount -o rw,users,umask=000 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sd1  # mount

Check permissions

ls -ld /mnt/sd1

Test

sudo bash -c "echo 'Hello World' > /mnt/sd1/hello.txt"  # test writing with sudo
cat /mnt/sd1/hello.txt                   # test reading (as user)
ls -l /mnt/sd1                           # check permissions of the content
rm /mnt/sd1/hello.txt                    # test removing (as user)
echo 'I am a user' > /mnt/sd1/user.txt   # test writing (as user)

edited Aug 17 '18 at 22:33

answered Aug 17 '18 at 20:52

Joshua Besneatte

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sorry but I never used exFat. Do I need to do something special after installation ? – Baptiste Clauss Aug 17 '18 at 21:05
sometimes exfat shows as vfat... exfat is the newer fat32 (exfat) and I have had the same issue and resolved it with above answer... did you try installing those libs? you can always uninstall if it doesn't work.. – Joshua Besneatte Aug 17 '18 at 21:08
Yes but it says that my hard drive id "is neither a device, nor a regular file." – Baptiste Clauss Aug 18 '18 at 14:21
did you try mounting using this command? sudo mount -o rw,users,umask=000 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sd1 with same result? – Joshua Besneatte Aug 18 '18 at 16:04

Mounted hard drive can't be browsed

1 Answers1