[PLUG] Mounting a Winders drive with USB

[Joe Pruett]

> I have a 30 GB Maxtor drive installed in a USB case. I successfully
> backed up some files from my XP laptop to that drive through the XP's
> USB port. Then, I tried to mount the drive on my Ubuntu desktop. I get
> the following error message:
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> Cannot mount volume.
>
> Unable to mount the volume.
>
> Details
> $LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (, 1) Failed to mount '/dev/sdc1':
> Operation not supported Mount is denied because NTFS is marked to be in
> use. Choose one action: Choice 1: If you have Wihndows then disconnect
> the external devices by clickon on the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in
> the Windows taskbar then shutdown Windows cleanly. Choice 2: If you
> don't have Windows then you can use the 'force' option for your own
> responsibility. For example type on the command line: mount -t ntfs-3g
> /dev/sdc1 /media/disk -o force   Or add the option to the relevant row
> in the /etc/fstab file: /dev/sdc1 /media/disk/ntfs -3g force 0 0
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
> This may be the first time I've tried to use this drive on my Ubuntu
> machine. Other drives I've successfully shared via the USB case have not
> been NTFS. Do I need to plug the drive back into the XP laptop and do
> something special to "close" it before disconnecting the USB cable? BTW,
> there is no OS on the drive, just a handful of files and lots of blank
> space.

it sounds like you didn't use the 'remove safely' option before yanking 
the drive.  i'd suggest hooking it up, run a chkdsk (via the 
properties->tools->repair option), then make sure you do the 'remove 
safely' magic (can't recall if xp has that directly in the right click 
menu or if you have to use the removable drives thing in the task tray). 
after that, ubuntu should be happier.

but if you'll be moving this around a lot and have no real need for ntfs, 
you might want to reformat as fat32.