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

[Colin Law]

On 18 May 2010 15:41, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 9:41 AM, Rowan Berkeley
> <rowan.berkeley at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 2010-05-18 at 09:11 +0100, Avi Greenbury
>> <avismailinglistaccount at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> 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 depending on 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
>>
>> Aha, well, as it happens, it is less than half full. So I take it that
>> there is some procedure whereby I can create new and more
>> Ubuntu-friendly partitions on it alongside the NTFS ones and then move
>> all the files into them and finally delete the NTFS partitions? This
>> might take a while, but it would be worth doing if in future handling
>> the drive on Ubuntu machines will be much easier. It's a 500GB drive and
>> I have only 125GB in use currently. So please tell me where to go for
>> instructions on this. I'm glad I asked, now. Thanks, Avi.
>
> Easy. Using Gparted, shrink the NTFS partition to half the drive. (Say).
>
> Make a new extended partition. In there make a logical drive. Format it ext3.
>
> Mount both.
>
> Move all the stuff from the NTFS partition to the ext3 partition.
>
> When the NTFS partition is empty, unmount both. Use Gparted to remove
> the NTFS partition. Expand the ext3 partition to fill the drive.

Don't forget to back it up first.

Colin

>
> Job done.
>
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