Thread: force mount ntfs
5 Cups of Ubuntu 
force mount ntfs
XP some how became corrupted and now when I try to reinstall it, it wants to reformat. I cannot get into my Ubuntu 8.10 partition because Grub will not come up after Post so I am using a 8.04 Live CD. I would like to know how I can force mount my XP partition and my external back up so I can transfer some files.
I have tried to use the NTFS config tool but when I try to mount the disks it says they are being used my XP and/or they were not properly dismounted. Also it says I am not privileged to mound them either.
Run, little guy, run. 
Re: force mount ntfs
sudo mkdir /media/windows sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/windows -o force df -h
In the world of Linux, who needs Windows and Gates.
Got most of my golden beans at an auction on eBay (with a couple of free drinks ).
5 Cups of Ubuntu
Re: force mount ntfs
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkdir /media/windows ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/windows -o force ntfs_attr_pread: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error Failed to read $MFTMirr: Input/output error Failed to mount '/dev/sda1': Input/output error NTFS is either inconsistent, or you have hardware faults, or you have a SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot into Windows TWICE. The usage of the /f parameter is very important! If you have SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first you must activate it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g. /dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation for the details. ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on tmpfs 1.5G 13M 1.5G 1% /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/volatile tmpfs 1.5G 13M 1.5G 1% /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/volatile varrun 1.5G 108K 1.5G 1% /var/run varlock 1.5G 0 1.5G 0% /var/lock udev 1.5G 76K 1.5G 1% /dev devshm 1.5G 12K 1.5G 1% /dev/shm tmpfs 1.5G 16K 1.5G 1% /tmp gvfs-fuse-daemon 1.5G 119M 1.4G 9% /home/ubuntu/.gvfs /dev/sda5 30G 4.2G 24G 15% /media/disk
Run, little guy, run.
Re: force mount ntfs
Looks to me like you need to use TestDisk, http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk, to pick your ntfs partition.
In the world of Linux, who needs Windows and Gates.
Got most of my golden beans at an auction on eBay (with a couple of free drinks ).
Ubuntu addict and loving it 
Re: force mount ntfs
Are we sure /dev/sda1 is the ntfs partition? Find the device name of your ntfs partition in the output of «sudo fdisk -l» or «sudo blkid»
5 Cups of Ubuntu
Re: force mount ntfs
I installed TestDisk and it said it needed to be ran as root. Running fdisk gave:
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x38e438e3 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 56890 456968893+ 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda2 56891 60801 31415107+ 5 Extended /dev/sda5 56891 60801 31415076 83 Linux Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0xfe81fe81 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 1 121601 976760001 7 HPFS/NTFS
Where sda1 is the windows partition and sdb1 is the back up disk. Sda5 is my 8.10 partition that I cannot boot into because Grub does not appear after booting My back up disk is mounted and I can read and write from it.
Mount NTFS Windows partition on Ubuntu live CD
I’m using the newest Ubuntu live CD to restore my Windows partition. After booting my PC from the live CD I have access to the internet and so on but I cant see the NTFS drive. What should I do to mount it?
1 Answer 1
Once the system has started up, the first thing you want to do is choose Places \ Computer from the menu.
This should show you all the drives available in the system, including your Windows drive.
You can try and double-click on the drive to open it… and if it immediately works then lucky you! Most of the time it’s going to give you an error saying “Unable to mount the volume”, because Windows didn’t shut it down cleanly.
Click the Details link so that you can see the full message, and leave this window open. You’ll see a “Choice 2″ in the message, which includes the commands to force Ubuntu to use that drive even though there’s something wrong.
What you’ll want to do is open a new Terminal from Applications \ Accessories \ Terminal on the top menu. Once you’ve done that, then you’ll want to type in a bunch of commands, which I’ll walk you through.
First, we’ll want to switch to “administrator” mode, which in Linux terms is known as “root”. The simplest way to do it is with this command:
Now we’ll need to create a directory that we’ll mount the drive on. The full explanation of mounting drives is a little complex, so just run this command:
Now comes the tricky part. You’ll need to type out a command very similar to this one, but you’ll need to replace /dev/sda1 with what you see in that message box we showed you above. This command tells Ubuntu to use the ntfs-3g driver, and force mount even if there is a problem.
mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/disk -o force If your drive is FAT32 instead of NTFS, then you can use the following command instead:
mount -t vfat -o umask=000 /dev/sda1 /media/disk If you are having problems figuring out whether you have NTFS or FAT32, and you can’t figure out which /dev/whatever to use, then type in the following command at your prompt (make sure you already ran the command to run things as root)
In the output you should see a lot more information about the available drives… you can see in this example that the filesystem type is NTFS and the device name is /dev/sda1.