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I have a 2TB seagate HDD on USB 3 that I used for backups on 15.10. When plugging it in to 16.04 I now get this message below. Does anyone know how I can get it working again? I have literally everything saved on it and cannot access it.

Thanks

Error mounting /dev/sdf1 at /media/thomas/Seagate Expansion Drive: Command-line `mount -t "ntfs" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1000,gid=1000" "/dev/sdf1" "/media/thomas/Seagate Expansion Drive"' exited with non-zero exit status 13: $MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0).
Failed to mount '/dev/sdf1': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g. /dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation for more details.
David Foerster
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Tom - Ubuntu UK
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  • What filesystem is the drive in? Do you have access to Windows? If yes, do as the error message suggests. Boot into Windows and repair the drive. – Fiksdal Apr 24 '16 at 14:59
  • Thanks, I don't have access to Windows but I do have a Mac running OS X Lion. When plugging it in to that it says it is Windows NT File System (NTFS) and it works perfectly. I can read and write to the disk, no error messages. Is there any way to make it work on 16.04? The only thing I can think is to transfer the data bit by bit on a USB stick to 16.04 and then reformat the HDD (how I don't know). Is there a way just to make it work? Thanks – Tom - Ubuntu UK Apr 24 '16 at 15:13
  • Which format do you want to format it to? – Fiksdal Apr 24 '16 at 15:17
  • Boot from a 15.10 Live USB to see if it works. If it does, you can copy the contents to your internal drive. Then you can format the external drive to ext4 or exFAT or something like that and then copy everything back. – Fiksdal Apr 24 '16 at 15:21
  • Thanks, there is only about 30gb on there so I can save it on the Mac and reformat it. Is NTFS not compatible with 16.04? Or is there a way to make it compatible? I don't know what to reformat it to or how to do that on Ubuntu when it won't recognise the drive. I could try it on the Mac, however I'm switching to Ubuntu so would really like to learn how to do it 16.04. Thanks for all the comments too – Tom - Ubuntu UK Apr 24 '16 at 15:25
  • 16.04 is supposed to be compatible with NTFS. Try formating one of your USB sticks to NTFS to check. There is an app called Disks which will let you format drives. You should be able to do it even if the drive won't mount. The best app to use is called Gparted, you can install that as well. – Fiksdal Apr 24 '16 at 15:30
  • Thanks! I'll see what I can do. Thanks for your help. I can't really work out why it doesn't work on 16.04 when it is fine on the Mac and on 15.10. – Tom - Ubuntu UK Apr 24 '16 at 15:40
  • The first thing you should do is format one of your USB sticks to NTFS to see whether that works with 16.04. That way you'll see whether no NTFS will mount or whether it's just this drive. NTFS gets corrupted easily. It's possible that OS X can handle this corruption but 16.04 can't. So find out out. If the USB stick works, you may be able to use Disk Utility on your Mac to repair it your external drive. – Fiksdal Apr 24 '16 at 15:45
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    Possible duplicate of https://askubuntu.com/questions/74105/how-do-you-repair-an-input-output-error-in-an-ntfs-partition – David Foerster Apr 24 '16 at 18:11

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I have found a solution. For some reason the Mac would not verify the contents of the NTFS drive, as such I can only presume there was an error or something stopping it working correctly. I copied the contents to a USB stick and then formatted the external HDD in FAT32 format (Ubuntu wouldn't recognise exFAT). It now works fine and is doing the first backup of 16.04.

David Foerster
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Tom - Ubuntu UK
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  • IF only data, you may be ok. But Windows formats do not support ownership & permissions, so those are lost. With data easy to reset. If system files you cannot use them. Also FAT32 does not support files over 4GB and does not have jounal so chkdsk may not work or work as well. Your errors as posted in links above were either from mounting partition with newer Windows and it left it hibernated or it needed chkdsk from Windows. IF not running Windows you should not use Windows formats as chkdsk periodically required. – oldfred Apr 24 '16 at 18:36
  • Thanks, the HDD is literally only to be used as a backup disk for Ubuntu, nothing else. I have just scheduled a routine backup and let it do it's thing. I hope it will be ok, the other formats didn't seem to work for some reason. I might periodically make a secondary backup on DVDs/dropbox for the files I couldn't bear to lose. Do you think FAT32 will be ok? I won't have any files over 4gb. – Tom - Ubuntu UK Apr 24 '16 at 19:10
  • What would you suggest as the best file format to use? I can always format and start again. It would also need to be used on Mac OS X Lion. Many thanks – Tom - Ubuntu UK Apr 24 '16 at 19:22
  • I do not know Mac, but thought that greatly limited your choices. Generally better to use native file systems. Or for Windows use NTFS, but Linux ext4 or whatever your preference is. Not even sure what Mac uses as its native file system. Your issues before with ext4 were probably related to ownership & permissions, which you have to manually set. http://askubuntu.com/questions/324705/first-full-backup-on-usb-permission-denied/324942#324942 – oldfred Apr 24 '16 at 20:02