Interesting Linux filesystem problem..

[pkphy39]

OK. I am a born-again Linux newbie. I swore it off a couple of years ago, but have been drawn back again by the unreliability of Windows.

But, OS war-instigating comments aside, here's my problem.

I installed Mandrake on a 10GB IBM Deskstar, no problem - had some problems with sound and mouse/kb, but got all that worked out, and am satisified so far.

So I decided it was time to put my other drive in (which I left out initially because it caused some problems for me in Win2000 after a while, and I didn't want the installer to format it). So I popped my 30GB IMB Deskstar as /dev/hdc, and lo and behold, I can't access anything on it.

I've tried a million different ways to mount it, but just can't get it to work. I've gotten error messages from "only root can mount /dev/hdc1" (which I then try and fails), to "mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdc, or too many mounted file systems"

Through Mandrake's graphical diskdrake (partitioning system), I can see that hdc is there, but it's color-coded as a Linux swap device, and the type is listed as "Linux swap (sharing disk with DRDOS)/S"

From the command line, I poked around in fdisk to see what it had to say about this drive/partition, and it listed it as a filesystem of type "SFS" (or Secure File System).

PLEASE, what the hell is going on? Does anyone have any idea? I imagine this disk is NTFS, as it was a Win2k disk, but it could be FAT32, right? Anybody have any ideas as to how this problem could be remedied?

Oh. and the caveat - I have 30GB of data on that drive that would be next to impossible to replace. So if it's not gone already, I would love to protect it.

Thank you all so much in advance for your help. I just really want to get this working so I can get to items 2-30 on my 'Linux to-do' list.

 

[Chatterjee]

if it's ntfs, you're going to have to re-compile your kernel for ntfs read support... i'm guessing this is the case since it should recognize fat32 partitions without any problems.

-S

 

[pkphy39]

I read the same thing last night when trying to figure out what was going on. Apparently, I already have NTFS support.

Is there a possibility that there's something wrong with the disk physically? Or would I be getting completely different messages?

(This would all be so simple if I could just format the disk)

Thanks for posting. Any other ideas?

 

[MGMorden]

Try mounting it as ntfs and then as fat32. If it doesn't mount either way then you've got some problems. If it does mount then forget about what fdisk says (long as you got the data right ). Just one problem: if the filesystem on the second drive is in fact NTFS then even if you can mount it you'll technically only be able to read from it (technically b/c from what I've heard you can also write to it all you want to with Linux's ntfs write support, but if you ever put the drive back into a windows machine it'll be instantly corrupted). If you just want the data then this isn't an issue, but if you want to space to use then you're going to need to find out a way to get the data off of this disk and then reformat and put it back on.

 

[bubba]

Are you sure it is partition 1? make sure of that, or (obviously) mounting the wrong partition won't work.

Did you make the drive encrypted NTFS? If so, Linux will have no chance of reading it...

 

[pkphy39]

Yeah, I've tried both, to no avail.

Do I have to worry about screwing around with fstab at all? I've gone back and forth between doing it there, with the cl "mount" command, and from within KDE - does it make a difference?

Currently, I don't think it's mentioned in fstab at all. Should it be? If so, what should the settings be? Everything I find online tells me something different.

Thanks again..

 

[pkphy39]

There's only one partition on the drive, and as for encrypted NTFS - not as I remember. I would have had no reason to do that, and can't remember having done that. So my answer to that one would have to be no.

I just hope I can keep that data, and get the dang thing working.

Thanks.

 

[Chatterjee]

what version of mandrake do you have? I'm pretty sure that 8.0 and 8.1 *need* to be re-compiled for ntfs support even though they say they have it "out of the box"

 

[pkphy39]

8.1

any tips on how I can check to make sure it is installed? and if not, how I go about doing that?

That would be great.

Thanks a million.

 

[Nothinman]

Type 'cat /proc/filesystems', that will tell you all the supported filesystems. If ntfs isn't in the list, type 'modprobe ntfs' and if it goes without error another 'cat /proc/filesystems' should show ntfs in the list.

Also type 'fdisk -l /dev/hdc' and see what that says.

Are you sure it's not a Win2K dynamic disk?

 

[pkphy39]

OK.

cat /proc/filesystems does show ntfs in the list.

fdisk -l /dev/hdc returns:
Disk /dev/hdc: 16 heads, 63 sectors, 59560 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 59559 30017421 42 SFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(1023, 254, 63) should be (1023, 15, 63)

...and I don't know what a Win2k dynamic disk is... so... I don't know the answer to that question.

the fdisk -l command must be how I found out the filesystem was SFS before (as you can see above).

So what does this all mean? Does "Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary" have something to do with it? Doesn't sound too good. Is there a way to correct this? And why is the filesystem listed as SFS?

Again, thank you everyone for your help. This is most confusing.

 

[Nothinman]

I have no idea what SFS is, if you can boot up Win2K open up the disk administrator and see if it says the disk is basic or dynamic.

The boundary thing isn't a big deal as far as I know, it's just a geometry difference between the BIOS and how Linux sees the disk.

 

[pkphy39]

Can't boot up Win2k. I completely wiped it and am transitioning 100% Linux (well, on this box. my laptop is still Win2k).

If only there were a way to hook up my full-size drive to my laptop to check it out...

 

[Skaven]

You could always try partition magic (cringe). Or just bring it to a buddy's place this weekend to transfer data and re-format the drive!

Perhaps a Win2k emergency boot disk will allow you to view partition info?

 

[NorthenLove]

<< what version of mandrake do you have? I'm pretty sure that 8.0 and 8.1 *need* to be re-compiled for ntfs support even though they say they have it "out of the box" >>




NTFS support is flaky at best and it supports read only!!!! If you try to write to it under Linux you will screw up your NTFS partition. He should use FAT32 or UMSDOS instead for storage and for transferring files on the windows drive to his Linux drive and use NTFS for Windows system and application to run off.

 

[pkphy39]

Well, this isn't a dual-boot situation. I'm all Linux now - I just want to be able to get to the files on this disk. As I remember, there isn't much (if any) space free on the disk, so writing isn't what I plan on doing.

That being said, as far as using UMSDOS or FAT32 - that's not really necessary. If I can txfer the files off to another drive and reformat it as an enormous linux partition, then push the files back to it, that's what I would do.

Is there any way to convert the filesystem to something else, but keep the data intact? That would be an ideal solution.

thanks again everybody..