Minor issues with an external hard drive

[mandoran]

I have two questions that I think might be related. I just added an external HDD to the machine I am running Linux Lite on. First, I would like to know how to make LL, or maybe more accurately? - Krusader - automount this drive. Krusader doesn't seem to see it until I open the drive via the desktop or Thunar.

The other thing I wonder about is that I have suddenly been unable to restart the machine - it exits LL and then I get an NTLDR not found error message, start with ctr-alt-delete - which doesn't work. LL has no trouble starting though, only restarting (that I have seen so far, I haven't checked to see if it does not come out of suspend mode, for example).

I haven't been able to find these issues addressed, though did see some people saying NTLDR could be linked to the addition of external drives.

Oh - I hope this is in the right place - since I'd like something to happen on startup and stop happening on shutdown, I chose this branch, though maybe I should have gone to the hard drive section...

Thanks!

[mandoran]

So ... is this a bad question?

[valtam]

Adding drives is covered step by step in the Help Manual, there is no point in us typing here what has already been made available to you.
Secondly re. NTLDR it may be related to the external drive. Once you set up the external drive correctly, check for error again.

[mandoran]

I have finally had the chance to test this. Adding the drive following the advice in the manual now leads to the drive being unmounted on boot up. The NTLDR error persists on attempts to restart. If I try to mount the external drive now I get the following error: Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 1: helper failed with:
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sdb1 is already mounted on /home/jonathan/ntfsfiles
mount failed

Before, without modifying the fstab file, the drive would open Thunar after boot, when the drive would suddenly be mounted. But Krusader was not automatically mounting the drive when I ran Krusader, which was what I was hoping. And I had the NTLDR problem when restarting.

Now, after I am quite sure following the add a drive instructions, the drive does not seem to be working properly at all.

[gold_finger]

If I try to mount the external drive now I get the following error: Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 1: helper failed with:
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sdb1 is already mounted on /home/jonathan/ntfsfiles
mount failed

Error message says it's already mounted -- at /home/jonathan/ntfsfiles.  So, I'm assuming you followed instructions from Help Manual and created an entry in /etc/fstab to automount on boot.  (That looks like what is indeed happening.)  If you go to your home directory there should be a folder called "ntfsfiles".  That's the location now for your drive and the files on it.

Before, without modifying the fstab file, the drive would open Thunar after boot, when the drive would suddenly be mounted.

Now that you have it automounted as part of the filesystem it won't do that anymore.  Just open file manager and navigate to the "ntfsfiles" directory under /home/jonathan.  I don't use Krusader, (looks similar to Midnight Commander and/or Ranger which I have), but that should work fine also -- just navigate to /home/jonathan/ntfsfiles.

If your files don't show up there for some reason, post back the output of these two commands:

Code:

sudo blkid

Code:

cat /etc/fstab

The NTLDR error persists on attempts to restart.

Not sure what that is, but sounds like something left over from a Windows system.  Did you have Windows installed to that external drive at some point?

[mandoran]

Thanks very much for all that, I will investigate as soon as I can. The NTLDR error message I don't know so much about, though when it first happened I noticed from Googling it that it was sometimes linked to an external hard drive, so I thought it could well be related here.

I don't know if it can be a Windows problem, but it can't be in this case, I'm running LL on a laptop that has never had anything else on its new SSD which is its one and only hard drive.

[mandoran]

Ah, just noticed that I misread part of your reply. Windows has never been installed to the external drive either, it is a backup drive and just contains data, no OS - but it has been in use attached to Windows machines, if that might be a factor.

[N4RPS]

Hello!

Sounds like what you have is enough of a Windows boot sector on that external HD for it to think that Windows MIGHT BE installed, but not enough for it to actually BE THERE. It also sounds like SOMETHING, sometime in the past, enabled a flag that's telling your PC this drive is bootable.

If you want to leave it hooked up on startup, you'll have to either use GPartEd to 'turn off' that boot flag, or turn it off as a boot selection in your BIOS. The former option is preferable because THAT will keep it from trying to boot into a Windows install that doesn't exist...

73 DE N4RPS
Rob

[mandoran]

Aha - that's interesting, thanks. I should be able to manage to set it as non-bootable in GParted. I will see if that sorts me out.

[gold_finger]

With regards to your NTLDR problem -- just so I am sure what you mean:

If you do a normal "shutdown" of LinuxLite -- no problem.  Correct?

If you do a "restart" of LL -- problem.  Correct?

On the restart, does the problem occur after LL is down and then started up again?  Or does LL hang and not shutdown for reboot at all?

If problem is that LL does go down, but reboot process shows error, experiment with following and report back result:
-- hit "reboot" like you normally do
-- immediately after LL goes down (and BEFORE) reboot starts, disconnect external drive.
-- I'm guessing that you now don't get the error message.  Is that correct?

-- If "yes" (you now don't get the error message), then my guess is that somehow Windows stuck something in the MBR of the external drive.  How/Why?  I don't know.  Maybe some Windows update done with the external drive attached caused that -- purely a wild guess on my part!

-- You can get rid of what's in the MBR with the following command, but you need to be EXTREMELY CAREFUL that it is entered correctly and is pointed at the external drive:

Code:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=446 count=1

Substitute the correct drive designation for your external drive where I have /dev/sdX above.  (NOTE:  you are using just sdX, not a particular partition like sdX1.)  For example, if you have one internal drive and one external drive, sda will likely be the internal drive and sdb might be the designation for the external drive.  The command zeros out the first 446 bytes of the drive, which is where the MBR is located.

To find the correct designation for the external drive, have the drive connected then run following command:

Code:

lsblk

Confirm the result you find with above by running next command (look to see if it shows same sdX as other command did for the external drive):

Code:

sudo blkid

WARNING and FULL DISCLOSURE:
Using the dd command can be very dangerous -- if done improperly can easily wipe out your drive!  I have not needed to use the command myself in the above form (to wipe out an MBR); so you may want to wait until another knowledgeable Linux user checks and confirms that the command I've written is correct before proceeding.