Unable to mount NTFS external hard drive

Install ntfs-3g with sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g. Then run the ntfsfix command on your NTFS partition.

ntfsfix v2.0.0 (libntfs 10:0:0)

Usage: ntfsfix [options] device

Attempt to fix an NTFS partition.

-h, --help             Display this help
-V, --version          Display version information

For example: ntfsfix /dev/hda6

Developers' email address: [email protected] Linux NTFS homepage: http://www.linux-ntfs.org

Note: Whenever you're dealing with partition, make sure that you have a complete backup just to be on the safe side.

sudo apt-get install testdisk

Then run it:

sudo testdisk

and follow the instructions. You must search for partitions and then write the changes.

Thanks to answerers here:

• Fix corrupt NTFS partition without Windows

• Repair NTFS without Windows?

This was good enough for me:

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb1

On Ubuntu 14.04 this comes with:

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

Older versions of Ubuntu (e.g. 12.04) would require:

sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs

This looks like an old question, but I ran into this issue in ubuntu 15.10. I mounted the hard drive in windows and simply removed the ._.Trashes directory on the drive that happened to contain a lot of data. Then I plugged it back into linux and it worked fine.

Just in case this happens to anyone else and they don't hit dr Hannibal Lecter's comment, I just had to try a different USB port. There's nothing wrong with that USB port, but for some reason, it wouldn't work with this drive.