I reported this in SEPT 2024 to the ASKUBUNTU page and noticed some other user reporting the same problem. All recommendations offered by senior users were tried, but none solved the problem. This is the problem:
I boot with U24.10 and on “FILES”, I click on “OTHER LOCATIONS”. The app shows all the drives available on the system.
I click on my 2Tb HDD (or on any USB stick inserted) and I get this msg:
UNABLE TO ACCESS LOCATION. ERROR MOUNTING (drive address), WRONG FS TYPE, BAD OPTION, BAD SUPERBLOCK OF (drive addr). MISSING CODEPAGE OR HELPER PROGRAM, OR OTHER ERROR.
I am using Ubuntu since release 11, maybe even before, can’t recall my first installation. Never had this problem before.
On both U24.1 & U24.04 the same mesg is displaied. In U22 & previous releases, I never had any problems with the drive.
If I use “DISK” I have the same problem; with “DISK ANALYZER” the drive is reported as UNMOUNTED and impossible to MOUNT it.
I have now a dual boot PC with U22 + U24. If I boot on U22, I can read/write data to the drive without any problems. This also applies to any installed USB stick.
I Just installed now 4/JAN/2025 a new Ubuntu 24.10 hoping to see this bug clear, but it is still there.
I see that this bug is reported for many months on ASKUBUNTU web page.
sadly askubuntu is not an actual place to report bugs for Ubuntu … you rather want to report things to launchpad.net or use the pre-installed ubuntu-bug tool to have it do it for you … without a bug on launchpad.net developers will not be aware of the issue and as such will not fix it …
Hello! Let’s troubleshoot this filesystem mounting issue systematically. It’s particularly interesting that this works in Ubuntu 22.04 but not in 24.04/24.10, which suggests a change in how newer Ubuntu versions handle filesystem mounting.
It could also mean that on 22.04 you had installed additional packages to support an alternative filesystem, which doesn’t ship by default on 24.04 or 24.10.
Let’s go through some debugging steps, to find out:
First, let’s identify the filesystem type and partition details. When booted into Ubuntu 24.10, run:
sudo fdisk -l
This will list all disks and their partitions.
Next, check the filesystem type:
sudo blkid
This will show the filesystem type (NTFS, exFAT, etc.) and UUID of each partition.
For NTFS (only) drives specifically, ensure you have the necessary packages:
sudo apt install ntfs-3g
Check if the filesystem is clean and hasn’t been improperly unmounted:
sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdX # Replace X with your drive letter
Try manual mounting to get more detailed error messages:
sudo mkdir -p /media/external
sudo mount -v /dev/sdX /media/external
Check system logs for more detailed error messages:
dmesg | tail -n 50
or
journalctl -xe
Verify user permissions:
ls -l /media
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /media/external
If the drive is showing in fdisk -l but not mounting, check fstab entries:
cat /etc/fstab
Could you run these commands and share the output? This will help narrow down whether this is:
thanks for the time. The ntfs 3g was already installed, so that was never the reason for the problem. This recommendation of yours shows me that U24 doesn’t automatically mount at start up the /media/external.
I got it working (I mean YOU) when I used in TERMINAL the “sudo mount -v /dev/sdb1 /media/external” command. Good, You got it, thank you, but…
Always a BUT.
I got it working when I used the “sudo mount -v /dev/sdb1 /media/external”
command. The BUT comes when I switch off the PC and start it again. The drive HAS TO be manually mounted; without that, the error in question “ERROR MOUNTING…” comes up. As soon as I do the SUDO MOUNT… all is ok. So, is there a way to make that MOUNT automatic at startup of the system?
I already used the launchpad.net to report this to UBUNTU, which I call a bug. My argument has always been that with the previous releases of Ubuntu, my system worked just fine, no need to MOUNT anything. So, why now? This is why I call this a BUG.
Just let me know how, if possible, to MOUNT the drive at start up.
I read somewhere, that Ubuntu 24.04 switched to ntfs kernel drivers, which has precedence if both ntfs-3g fuse driver and kernel driver is enabled. It could be culprit and blacklisting ntfs kernel driver could fix issue.
I have the same problem and don´t know how to fixed. I can mount the external disk manually but the disk can´t be mounted automatically.
This happens in ubuntu 24.04. In ubuntu 22.04 is mounted automatically,
$ sudo ntfsfix /dev/sda
Mounting volume… NTFS signature is missing.
FAILED
Attempting to correct errors… NTFS signature is missing.
FAILED
Failed to startup volume: Invalid argument
NTFS signature is missing.
Trying the alternate boot sector
Unrecoverable error
Volume is corrupt. You should run chkdsk.
You should run the ntfsfix command on the partition not the drive, sda1, sda2 rather than sda. As the output indicates, you really can’t do much to fix an ntfs partition filesystem from linux but need to run chkdsk from windows.
There’s nothing wrong with the drive, I can mount it manually but auto mount fails and all the built in desktop apps that try to access the manually mounted partition crash the system.
The error you report says specifically the volume is corrupt. You are using a foreign (non-Linux) filesystem which can not be repaired unless you use windows chkdsk to do it. What desktop apps are you referring to. The only thing you should use an ntfs partition for with Linux is for shared data.
I suggest (If it is NTFS) to put it in a Windows system and run a full chkdsk. Then use the safe remove feature in the OS and only unplug it once instructed.
You didn’t read the whole thread. Like me, all that are reporting say that the drive works fine with previous Ubuntu releases; also, the drive mounts and works fine in U24 if MANUALLY MOUNTED. What is in question is the auto-mounting of the drive; that is buggy.
If the drive works fine with previous releases of Ubuntu; if it also works fine with U24 “AFTER MANUALLY MOUNTED”, then what you recommend is pointless. The problem isn’t the drive, the symptoms all point to a bug in U24
The NTFS driver became more strict in newer releases to avoid data corruption when a windows drive is marked dirty.
There were apparently reports of data loss in the past when drives were not clean, so you should really make sure to use chkdisk on windows to clean the dirty flag of the filesystem.
To give you still the ability to use the drive even in this state you can still manually mount It at your own risk if you think this is safe though…
