Troubleshooting external hard disk formatting in Linux Mint 10

[Tanishka]

I was having Microsoft windows vista operating system installed on my Acer Aspire 4920 Notebook but now I have switched myself from windows to Linux platform. I figured I might as well convert my external hard disk to some Linux file system, so I installed gparted and tried formatting to both ext3 and ext4, but after the formatting the hard disk I can't do anything with the drive such as copy or create files. Also I am not having permission for viewing certain folders and therefore I need a solution through which I can troubleshoot this problem.

[mesterio]

Gparted is a tool used on Linux platform which can be used for creating, deleting, resizing, moving, checking and copying partitions, and the file systems on them. We can create space for new operating systems, reorganizing disk usage, copying data residing on hard disks and mirroring one partition with another etc and many other feature. If you are using gparted tool for formatting the drive then before using gparted you may need to enter root password. If the root password is not entered then you may face permission problems. You can troubleshoot this problem by entering password which will solve the permission problem. To solve the permission problem you may need to type the command given below:

sudo chown -Rv raptor:raptor /media/label_of_usb_drive

where raptor is the user name and your USB drive mounts in the terminal.

[Enriquee]

If you are facing permission problems after entering the correct password for the root user then there might be a possibility that the root password has been changed. If the root password has been changed then you may face permission problem. You can easily change the root password to your user name by following the command given below:

sudo chown -Rv user_name:user_name /media/label_of_usb_drive

Where username is to be entered by you and after entering user name your permission problema may get resolved.

[Tanishka]

I was having problem with the file permission such that I cannot access certain folders. Thanks for providing me the solution. From the above given solution I have changed the root password and set a new user name. After setting the user name, now my permission problems have been resolved. Also I think that some of the file system in my Mint 10 operating system has been corrupted and therefore3 I need a solution to troubleshoot this problem so that my corrupted file system could be repaired.

[SalVatore]

If your file system in Linux operating system is corrupted then you can easily troubleshoot this problem by following the steps given below:

1. You need to start the system and then open the terminal window by going to the “Applications”/"Accessories”.
2. You may then need to type “init 1” which brings the system down to run level one.
3. Type the command "umount /dev/sda2" to unmount the file system, to unmount the file system which you want to repair. Replace "/dev/sda2" with the correct device name for the partition. If there is a single partition file system such as "/home", you can type the command "umount /home".
4. Type "fsck -y /dev/sda2"command to repair the file system. you need to repeat this fdisk command until no more errors are repeated.
5. Type "mount /dev/sda2" command to remount the file system. Now the file system will be easily resolved.