[ubuntu-uk] What to do if external hard drive isn't unmounted properly?

[Avi Greenbury]

Rowan Berkeley wrote:
> It's NTFS. I originally put all the stuff on it from a Windows machine,
> which uses NTFS by default. I have experienced no problems in using it
> on the newer Ubuntu machine. But once, I did power down without
> unmounting it, and the next time I started it, it complained of an
> 'unclean demount'. The way I got out of it then was by putting it back
> on the Windows machine and closing it down from there, but I don't want
> to have to do that in future, as I may not have a Windows machine to do
> it on.

In that case, you'll want to be using a Linux native filesystem, for 
which repair tools exist in Linux. Ext3 or ext4 are likely a good bet, 
others may be more appropriate dependin gon what you intend to store on 
it and how you intend to access it.

NTFS is a good option if you've a Windows PC for it to interact with. If 
there's no Windows about, life tends to be easier if you stick with 
Linux native filesystems. Unfortunately, there's no way to convert it, 
you'll be looking at copying files elsewhere to convert it, unless it's 
less than half full.

-- 
Avi Greenbury