Cannot mount drives and partitions--Solved

[Floydcat2]

A little background. I decided to replace Windows XP with Linux Lite. I researched it and decided that Linux Lite was a good, free OS. My comp is a ThinkPad R61 with 1.99 GB of RAM, an Intel 2 Duo Core. I recently replaced the hard drive with a SATA 7200, 500 GB. I chose to replace Windows instead of doing a dual install. The Linux Lite install went as described in the online manual, but I cannot mount the drives and the partitions. When I follow the instructions as described in the online manual, the end result is this message:

Failed to mount '/dev/sda5': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sda5' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?

Can anyone help with this? I'm new to Linux but I'm not ready to give up. I'm pretty sure that this is causing my laptop to improperly start up. The only way I can get going is to start up in safemode, otherwise it doesn't boot.

Any help is welcome. I'm not techy and even though I have gotten this far, I will probably need things spelled out for me. Thanks in advance.

[Scott(0)]

Hi Floydcat2

Please open a terminal, type the command below and paste the output here. Note, the -l is a lowercase L.

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

[Floydcat2]

Ok. This was the result:

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00009be4

  Device Boot      Start        End      Blocks  Id  System
/dev/sda1  *        2048  972597247  486297600  83  Linux
/dev/sda2      972599294  976771071    2085889    5  Extended
/dev/sda5      972599296  976771071    2085888  82  Linux swap / Solaris

[Scott(0)]

Thanks, the fdisk output looks good, I see only linux related filesystems.

Let's get a little more info. Please open a terminal, type the command below and paste the output here.

Code:

cat /etc/fstab

[Floydcat2]

Sorry for the late reply. Had to work. Here it is:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>  <type>  <options>      <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc          proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0      0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=17a13c75-cd5c-4ca0-9e58-060dde4771b4 /              ext4    errors=remount-ro 0      1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=e0184c41-8d40-4684-bf4d-fcb8c9489ee5 none            swap    sw              0      0
UUID=0463741f-a838-40c8-b40f-3dbb7f988e29 /home/kathy/ntfsfiles ntfs defaults,umask=007,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0

[Scott(0)]

No problem on the reply, work comes first.

The /etc/fstab output looks pretty good.  Can't tell from the output, is there a blank line at the end of the file?

[Floydcat2]

Hmmm, not sure. It skips a line but there is no promt, indicator or anything. Just blank. After the skip is my username and dollar sign prompt. I'm glad that everything looks okay so far, but do you (or anyone) have any idea yet as to why I got the original error message in my first post?

Perhaps I should have mentioned that my hard drive is fairly new. When my old one died a couple of months ago, I used Macrium Reflect to image the old drive and then moved everything to my new one. But now all of that is gone (on my new drive) since I installed Linux Lite.

Thanks for your help so far.

[gold_finger]

Boot up into Linux Lite, open terminal and post back the output from these:

Code:

ls -l /home/kathy

Code:

lsblk

Code:

sudo blkid

Your /etc/fstab file has an entry for an NTFS partition with a mount point of /home/kathy/ntfsfiles, but that partition did not show up on the above fdisk -l output.  Do you know why?  Is that data on an external drive that you don't always have connected?

[Floydcat2]

@gold_finger:
Thanks for your offer to help. After following your instructions here is the result:

total 36
drwxr-xr-x 2 kathy kathy 4096 Apr 14 23:05 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x 2 kathy kathy 4096 Apr 14 22:26 Documents
drwxr-xr-x 2 kathy kathy 4096 Apr 14 22:26 Downloads
drwxr-xr-x 2 kathy kathy 4096 Apr 14 22:26 Music
drwxr-xr-x 2 root  root  4096 Apr 14 23:30 ntfsfiles
drwxr-xr-x 2 kathy kathy 4096 Apr 14 22:26 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x 2 kathy kathy 4096 Apr 14 22:26 Public
drwxr-xr-x 2 kathy kathy 4096 Apr 14 22:26 Templates
drwxr-xr-x 2 kathy kathy 4096 Apr 14 22:26 Videos
kathy@kathy-ThinkPad-R61:~$ lsblk
NAME  MAJ:MIN RM    SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0  465.8G  0 disk
├─sda1  8:1    0  463.8G  0 part /
├─sda2  8:2    0      1K  0 part
└─sda5  8:5    0      2G  0 part [SWAP]
sr0    11:0    1    4.3G  0 rom 
zram0  251:0    0 1003.6M  0 disk [SWAP]
kathy@kathy-ThinkPad-R61:~$ sudo blkid
[sudo] password for kathy:
/dev/zram0: UUID="e324cd90-dbe4-4989-97d0-8beb19ac9adc" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda1: UUID="17a13c75-cd5c-4ca0-9e58-060dde4771b4" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda5: UUID="e0184c41-8d40-4684-bf4d-fcb8c9489ee5" TYPE="swap"

I can't answer your question about the partition not showing up. As I stated earlier, I replaced Windows XP with Linux Lite, but I can't get my drives and partitions mounted. I can't explain the error message about the invalid NTFS, or why I have to boot in safe mode to get going.

Let me be clear that I am not trying to recreate anything that I had in XP. I have some simple documents that I have backed up on a flashdrive, so no worries there. I'm trying to start fresh with Linux Lite. So far it is doing everything that I want/need, except for this crazy situation.

What else can I do to help you so that you can help me?

[gold_finger]

Okay -- I'm not sure how this happened, but you somehow ended up with an entry in /etc/fstab that is for auto-mounting an NTFS partition on every boot-up.  It wants to mount the partition at /home/kathy/ntfsfiles.  According to what you've said and your other partition output, there is no existing NTFS partition to be mounted.  So, I think your problem will disappear if you just delete that line in the /etc/fstab file.

However, you do have the mount point /home/kathy/ntfsfiles in your file system and that normally wouldn't be there unless you or the installer (?) did so on purpose.  Since I'm fairly sure YOU didn't do that (because it involves manually performing steps that you would remember doing), the installer must have.  Why?  I have no clue.  Maybe you happened to have something holding Windows files connected to computer during installation and it made an entry for it.  (Just a wild guess!  I really have no idea how that happened.)

Let's first get rid of the unneeded fstab entry.

*  Open a terminal and type this command to open the file in a text editor:

Code:

gksu leafpad /etc/fstab

*  Scroll down and delete this:

Code:

UUID=0463741f-a838-40c8-b40f-3dbb7f988e29 /home/kathy/ntfsfiles ntfs defaults,umask=007,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0

*  Your file should now look like this:

Code:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=17a13c75-cd5c-4ca0-9e58-060dde4771b4 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=e0184c41-8d40-4684-bf4d-fcb8c9489ee5 none            swap    sw              0       0

*  Save the file, then close the text editor.

*  Close the terminal

*  Reboot the computer to see if the error message goes away.

If it's fine now, good.  Now let's find out if any files are in that NTFS directory you have.  Open a terminal and enter this command to make you the owner of that directory and everything under it:

Code:

sudo chown -R kathy: /home/kathy/ntfsfiles

Check to make sure that worked:

Code:

ls -l /home/kathy

You should now see "kathy kathy" on the line for ntfsfiles instead of "root root".

Close terminal and open your Home folder with the GUI file manager.  Now you should be able to access that ntfsfiles directory and see what's in it.  (Maybe some of your old Windows files?  I don't know.)  If nothing is in there, or nothing you want to keep, then just delete it.