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I am unable to mount my NTFS drive on the latest stable Ubuntu Server 14.04 :

$ sudo mount /dev/sdc /media/wd3TbHdd -t ntfs
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sdc': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sdc' 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?

Here is my fdisk output (edited to remove non /dev/sdc info) :

$ fdisk -l

...

WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdc'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.


Disk /dev/sdc: 3000.6 GB, 3000592982016 bytes
256 heads, 63 sectors/track, 363376 cylinders, total 5860533168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1               1  4294967295  2147483647+  ee  GPT
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.

 ...

I have 4 HDD's attached and one of them being a NTFS that works fine on my Windows machine but not here on my Ubuntu Server

himanshuxd
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Jono
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  • So, rather than `fdisk`, which "`doesn't support GPT`", use `sudo parted -l`, and see what that says about `/dev/sdc` – waltinator Mar 01 '19 at 18:46

7 Answers7

17

You are trying to mount whole Hard Disk drive instead of Partition on it. Try mounting /dev/sdc1 instead of /dev/sdc.

slava
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user3901453
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    I still get an error: "the device '/dev/sdc1' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS" – IgorGanapolsky Jun 12 '16 at 17:43
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    I recommend opening separate question, because your's is not really related to device/partition problem of OP. However, it's possible that there's really no valid NTFS filesystem on that partition. Try double-checking that it exists, and if it does - [run ntfsfix from ntfs-3g package](http://askubuntu.com/questions/47700/fix-corrupt-ntfs-partition-without-windows). – user3901453 Jun 13 '16 at 18:57
  • Thanks, but I solved it with `mkntfs` command. Essentially this was an external SATA drive connected to my Raspberry PI. – IgorGanapolsky Jun 13 '16 at 19:14
2
sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb2

solved my problem. I was trying for sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb1. I guess I was pointing at a wrong partition.

Trect
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  • Thank you for this! I went into panic mode after I ran mkfs.ext4 on separate partition that was on the same drive as my NTFS partition. I ran into this error afterwards and feared that I had destroyed or erased my NTFS partition. This did the trick. I can relax now. – abaga129 Dec 07 '22 at 16:09
0

Had the same problem with the NTFS file system and the mount worked as fat file system. 

mkdir ~/bkpup
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 ~/bkpup/
slava
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TilakVarisetty
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0

I keep running into the same problem with multiple drives. I found out that running chkdsk on windows with the following parameters, somehow fixes the problem, although chkdsk doesn't report that it has found any errors.

chkdsk E: /F /X /scan /perf
TomerP
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If everything looks normal in Windows and running chkdsk on the NTFS drive doesn't reveal any faults, it could be that Windows enabled BitLocker without you knowing it. Run blkid and check the output.

blkid | grep BitLocker
/dev/nvme0n1p3: TYPE="BitLocker" PARTLABEL="Windows boot partition" PARTUUID="aa001122-bb33-44cc-dd55-66778899eeff"

If that is the case and you still need to access the file system from Linux, I see two options:

  • you disable BitLocker in Windows, or
  • you try to access the BitLocker partition from within Linux (e.g. with dislocker) – but that is a different story.

I say this because I have a laptop with Windows 10 Pro preinstalled and I was able to access the NTFS partition without problems, but at some point Windows automatically enabled BitLocker and I don't know when or why. The only thing I changed was disabling Secure Boot in the UEFI Firmware Settings (aka BIOS Setup) so I could install and configure Linux more hassle-free. Windows still boots fine without Secure Boot. And, yes, I had Windows install a couple of updates as well, including the upgrade from 2004 to 21H1. Maybe that's when it happened, but I cannot be sure.

luttztfz
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for me and future visitors, while installing Windows 10 on a separate hard drive, it decided to create EFI partitions ON ALL MY DISKS, causing my next boot into Linux to fail to mount NTFS partitions and getting the very much same error. Given there were new EFI partitions on every disk, fstab failed to mount because old references (/dev/sda1) were pointing to the EFI partitions instead of the data partitions (/dev/sda2). Updating them was all I need to do to fix it.

knoopx
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I was facing the same problem but maybe worse.

Disk /dev/sdd: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2052474d

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1   ?     6579571  1924427647   958924038+  70  DiskSecure Multi-Boot
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sdd2   ?  1953251627  3771827541   909287957+  43  Unknown
Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sdd3   ?   225735265   225735274           5   72  Unknown
Partition 3 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sdd4      2642411520  2642463409       25945    0  Empty

Partition table entries are not in disk order
Note: sector size is 2048 (not 512)

But I did the above mentioned command with a slight mod, from this:

sudo mount /dev/sdc /media/wd3TbHdd -t ntfs

To this:

create a directory where you wanna mount the hdd: mkdir /media/tmp/

then sudo mount /dev/sdX /media/tmp -t ntfs

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remyx
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    Excuse me if I'm missing something, but how is this the same issue? – wjandrea Aug 20 '17 at 18:35
  • It's because I also faced the issue of NTFS signature missing and resolved it by do the steps I mentioned above. My apologies, wjandrea, if I misinterpreted the issue. – remyx Sep 09 '17 at 06:08