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sunshineawake avatar Ubuntu

Access changed overnight to external drives

mx flag
sunshineawake

I had an external hard drive which has always worked for years. All of a sudden one day I opened my libre office which multiple files that were open after a crash and libre can't recover them because it can't see my external drives.

I have looked extensively into how to get programs to see external drives and nothing has worked.

The kicker is my bookmarked folders that are on my external drives also stopped being accessible if I click on the bookmark in nautilus. So if I click on my book mark it says 'you do not have permission necessary to view the contents of xyz folder'. But if I click on the external hard drive itself and then navigate down to said bookmarked subdirectory it shows just fine.

Can someone please help me to figure out why my programs can't see my external hard drives anymore after years of working. I had important documents that crashed unsaved that won't recover due to this as well as all my other programs can't save to my external drive anymore so I have to save them to documents which is a nightmare for organization when your work and job is involved in this process.

Thank you!

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pl flag
popey
What's the output of the `mount` command? Please add it to your question. Probably the disk is mounted, but under a new mount point, like `/media/user/disk1` rather than `/media/user/disk` which broke some links, but as it's still mounted you can navigate to it.
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sunshineawake avatar
mx flag
sunshineawake
@popey thank you so much. I entered the command and it returned a page or more of data. What I see at the end looks like exactly what you're talking about.... Output <-------"/dev/sdb1 on /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT1 type exfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,iocharset=utf8,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2) /dev/sdc1 on /media/idm/Extreme SSD type exfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,iocharset=utf8,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2)"------> It's the 'STORAGE-EXT1 at the /devsdb1 that is the issue.
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waltinator avatar
it flag
waltinator
Please [edit] your post to add new information, properly formatted. Information added via comments is hard for you to format, hard for us to read and ignored by future readers (who have better answers). Please click [edit] and add that vital information to your question so all the facts we need are in the question. Please don't use Add Comment, since that's our way to help you improve your question. All facts about your system and problem should go in the Question with [edit]. Please read https://askubuntu.com/help/how-to-ask and https://askubuntu.com/help/formatting . Help us help you.
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pl flag
popey

Chances are what's happened is at the point when /dev/sdb1 was trying to mount at the usual location /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT the folder /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT already existed, so to prevent overmounting and hiding what's in that folder, the system mounted /dev/sdb1 under /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT1. This is normal, to protect the contents of /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT

In some instances, if you reboot, all will be fine, and you'll end up back where you started with /dev/sdb1 mounted under /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT.

However, in the meantime you (or a program) may have inadvertently added files to /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT while the disk is mounted under /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT1.

So the /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT will always continue to exist, and you'll persist with the disk mounting under /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT1.

However, if you check /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT and make sure it truly is empty with a simple ls -ltahr /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT then you can confidently remove the folder, reboot, and chances are it will all be back as it was.

If, however, there is data in /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT then you probably want to move/copy/delete it as appropriate, and the folder /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT then reboot.

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sunshineawake avatar
mx flag
sunshineawake
Hi again and thank you so much again. It says cannot open directory /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT Permission denied. I did some other searching for how to mount and remount drives with a different mounting point once you shard the info in your first comment rather than just rely on you fyi but most of them said to move all the files and such like here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/555280/how-to-change-mounting-point Also I don't know what you mean by move/copy/delete it. Thank you again again ;)
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pl flag
popey
I just meant you can choose to move the files, copy the files or delete the files. I don't know what's in there, so it's your discretion about what you do with the files you find. if `ls /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT` didn't work, perhaps use `sudo` - `sudo ls -ltra /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT`
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sunshineawake avatar
mx flag
sunshineawake
Right and thank you again, I don't know get rid of the other ....STORAGE-EXT so that the system will not see and it mount the drive to STORAGE-EXT1 I want to be very careful not to delete my hard drive. the ls command worked and it shows me like two files in the .....AGE-EXT location but I don't even know how to find it in drives or nautilus in a place that differentiates between the two. I guess how would I get rid of the old ....AGE-EXT so that upon reboot the system would mount my drive in that mount point.
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sunshineawake avatar
mx flag
sunshineawake
Ok, I used the ls -ltahr /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT command to see the directory. I unlugged my ext hd and then did the sudo rm -R /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT and then ran ls -ltahr /media/idm/STORAGE-EXT again and it said 'no such file or directory'. So then I just plugged my ext hd back in and IT WORKED!!!!! THANK YOU SO SO SO MUCH FOR YOUR HELP @popy Thank you thank you thank you.
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