I need the exact command line structure to do a fsck on an external usb HDD with a NTFS file system (BTW the system can't mount the drive, says there's MFT issue)

[J]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 2:21 PM, Avi Greenbury <lists at avi.co> wrote:
> jimmckenzie at earthlink.net wrote:
>
>> The exact message (which I can't seem to cut and paste) basically
>> says there is an issue with the MFT and that I need to run CHKDSK/F
>> from Window$. That's not an option, I don't have anything MS makes
>> nor do I want anything they make.
>
> Then how have you ended up with an NTFS filesystem? I mean that with
> some sincerity - the obvious choice for a chkdisk utility is wherever
> that volume came from. Have you any friends with Windows installs who
> may be able to help?

Most likely, he bought it that way... every external HDD I've bought
has come from the factory formatted in NTFS.  I usually leave mine
that way because I DO have Windows systems that I need to share the
drives.  Though I'm curious as to what kind of partition table that
drive uses, since the old standard msdos won't support partitions
larger than 2TiB.  Is it using GPT? Most likely... but just curious.

> Anyway, there is no chkdisk utility for Linux. There's a few things
> which do similar sorts of things but might well not solve your problem.
>
> Is this error message preventing you from mounting the volume? Can you
> get a screenshot of it?  Things to look at if you do want to point
> something at it and see if it helps include ntfsfix and ntfsck (the
> latter comes in ntfsprogs). I don't have any direct, personal,
> experience with either, though, and obviously there's a chance they'll
> eat your data since any non-MS NTFS support is worked out on trial and
> error.

ntfsfix may help, but YMMV and Your On Your Own because I'm not
responsible for it eating your data.

NAME
       ntfsfix - fix common errors and force Windows to check NTFS

SYNOPSIS
       ntfsfix [options] device

DESCRIPTION
       ntfsfix  is a utility that fixes some common NTFS problems.  ntfsfix is
       NOT a Linux version of chkdsk.  It only repairs some  fundamental  NTFS
       inconsistencies,  resets  the  NTFS  journal file and schedules an NTFS
       consistency check for the first boot into Windows.

       You may run ntfsfix on an NTFS volume if you think it  was  damaged  by
       Windows or some other way and it cannot be mounted.

That's from the manpage...

you could also look at some of the other tools in the ntfs-3g
package... there's one called ntfsck that sounds interesting, but
there's no man page and I'm too lazy to GIFY and I am not brave enough
to run this stuff on my own NTFS drives...

Good luck!

Jeff