Solved External USB drive not detected in Linux MX

[Aristarchus]

Do you have full read/write permission to the mount point. Also see if you can mount and have full access to other similar device.
I don't know MX, but limited access to external devices may be set by design (as security feature).

 

[Erik Groothuijzen]

Do you have full read/write permission to the mount point. Also see if you can mount and have full access to other similar device.
I don't know MX, but limited access to external devices may be set by design (as security feature).

I have other usb drives and sticks, and only this one gives me problems.

 

[GatorsFan]

Make sure ntfs-3g and libntfs3g89 and libfsntfs-utils are installed after installation reboot

 

[bob466]

I did say that everything was working fine, i.o.w. everything I had issues with, with Mint. All my hard drives work except this one. I am trying to understand why and if I can fix it without loosing the hard drive or the data. If you can advise another Distro, please tell me as the number selections is just too great to be able to make a sensible selection having come from a lifetime use of Windows. Still like Windows but not Window 11 or being forced into buying a new laptop, which I can't afford anyway.

I've been using Mint Cinnamon for 9 years and no problems...except a Graphics Card and Kernel back in Mint 18.

As for Internal or External Drives...they fail and sometimes without warning. Sometimes it's best to just buy a new one and save yourself a lot bother.

If the Drive is seen in windoze...you could plug it in to a windoze machine and plug in another Drive and copy everything across...then format the bad Drive in windoze...then plug it back in to your Linux computer and see if it will mount.

If it does...then either leave it as is or re-format it to Fat 32...NTFS or EXT4...all are seen by Linux. The next step is to buy a portable 1TB SSD or larger as they are much faster and more reliable.

 

[Erik Groothuijzen]

Eventually solved by doing it the long way around. Found space on another drive, copies the files with windows, reformatted the disk to Fat32 and voila, Linux recognised it. All done and dusted.

 

[bob466]

Glad to hear my suggestion worked.

 

[Erik Groothuijzen]

Glad to hear my suggestion worked. View attachment 21262

I did have it in mind when I realised that Windows did recognise the drive, but I an searching for solutions in case I do not have Windows any more. The other solution would be to buy a bigger SSD and make the laptop dual boot with Windows 10 and Linux. Thanks for the support anyway.

 

[Brickwizard]

The other solution would be to buy a bigger SSD and make the laptop dual boot with Windows

I run multiple distributions [except windows] I back up all my important files and folders to an external drive on a regular basis, its better than loosing everything if the main drive goes base over apex at any point.

 

[Erik Groothuijzen]

I write all my data to external drives, as my SSD is fairly small, so I have to investigate a bigger SSD.

 

[bob466]

I did have it in mind when I realised that Windows did recognise the drive, but I an searching for solutions in case I do not have Windows any more. The other solution would be to buy a bigger SSD and make the laptop dual boot with Windows 10 and Linux. Thanks for the support anyway.

If you have in MX Linux the Disk Utility as I have in Mint Cinnamon you can try this...

If the Drive mounts...repairing the Filesystem doesn't harm data in the Drive...it's worth a try.

 

[bob466]

I write all my data to external drives, as my SSD is fairly small, so I have to investigate a bigger SSD.

It's better to have a bigger SSD...I have a 500GB SSD as bigger SSDs last longer. I have my SSD optimised to run more efficiently and have Trim set to run daily but I run Trim manually once a week with this command...

sudo fstrim -v /

I also run the above command with my portable 1TB SSD plugged in again once a week too.