I have two 1 Terabyte hard drives on my PC. One is internal, the other is attached by USB connector. Both are the same model of Western Digital. They both show up in the sidebar of the Files program. If I double-click on them, they both open, but the only thing in the terminal window is “Lost&Found.” I’m running Ubuntu 24.04.1. My backup program (DejaDup) says I need to install a drive with at least 918.6 GB free space, and won’t write backups. How do I restore the status quo ante?
let’s get more information about those two drives with commands
sudo parted -l
df -h -x tmpfs
Wnat do you see if you use the file-manager to view those disks?
OK, sudo parted -l gives:
Model: ATA WDC WD10EZEX-00B (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 2097kB 1049kB
2 2097kB 1000GB 1000GB ext4
Model: WD Elements 25A2 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 1000GB 1000GB primary ntfs
Model: WDC PC SN530 SDBPNPZ-256G-1002 (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 256GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 1128MB 1127MB fat32 boot, esp
2 1128MB 256GB 255GB ext4
3 256GB 256GB 1049kB ext2df -h -x tmpfs gives me:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p2 233G 23G 199G 11% /
efivarfs 128K 56K 68K 45% /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
/dev/nvme0n1p1 1.1G 11M 1.1G 1% /boot/efi
/dev/sda2 916G 445G 425G 52% /home
/dev/nvme0n1p3 976K 24K 884K 3% /media/roger/97a29456-627a-4604-94fb-673988cfa8d4
/dev/sdc1 932G 94M 932G 1% /media/roger/backupsI was just recently able to mount sdc1 on the backups point.
Looking at both disks from the file manager now gives me blank terminal screen. For both. Yesterday they both were showing “Lost&Found” directories.
Why NTFS and very old MBR?
You should only use NTFS if you also use drive with Windows and are not backing up Linux system files. You can backup data. But in both cases you lose ownership & permissions. With data you can run chown & chmod to reset, but for system the owner & permissions vary a lot by what part of system it is.
NTFS may require chkdsk or defrag which you can only do from Windows. And if used with Windows you must be sure to always have fast startup & bitlocker off. Fast startup sets hibernation flag, so Linux NTFS driver will not mount read/write as data will be lost when Windows restores from hibernation.
Ah, thanks. I used NTFS because I’ve seen it recommend. One of its advantages is that it can handle larger files. I didn’t realize the MBR is old – I never looked at it. I wonder if gparted put it there. I’ll reformat the drive as FAT32, which I used to do.
NTFS is better is sharing with Windows as it does support larger files & has journal, so chkdsk recovery is faster or possible. but that is only if sharing with Windows so you can run chkdsk & defrag. And are not saving Linux system files that require ownership & permissions as Windows does not support them.
I think gparted still defaults to MBR(msdos).
You can also use gparted but must change default partitioning first.
Select gpt under device, advanced over msdos(MBR) default partitioning before starting.
The only place to use MBR, is for a very old system that boots in BIOS mode only and you are installing Windows as Windows requires MBR for BIOS boot. That old of a system may not work with newer Windows. And Most old hardware does not know MBR from gpt, so it also works with gpt. I have used gpt on my 2006 laptop.
Thanks, everybody. I finally tracked down the problem with my backup drive. Many small typos in fstab and it needed to be formatted ext4. I did have to add a line to fstab, but once I got rid of all the typos I made it finally mounts properly. Well, almost – I have to send the backups to a local file. I still don’t see anything on the /home drive.