Re: can't mount USB disk

On 1/12/22 10:56 PM, Gary Aitken wrote:
> On 1/12/22 1:34 PM, Dale Scott wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "freebsd" <freebsd@dreamchaser.org> To: "freebsd-questions" 
>>> <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 
>>> 1:09:52 PM Subject: can't mount USB disk
>>
>> Hi Gary, here are my notes from the last time I had to do the same 
>> (fwiw it was probably a 16GB device)
>>
>> 1. Install fusefs-ntfs
> 
> Thanks, that did the trick.
> 
>> 3. Mount drive (read-only here, uncertain if writing to NTFS is as 
>> confident as on Linux)
> 
> I would like to clean up some stuff on that drive but given your note
> I guess I guess I will do that from a linux system.
> When plugged into a win7 system the device doesn't show up as a labelled
> (i.e. bigletter:\) drive, so I can't easily delete things on the win7
> system; not sure why that is.  windows-backup seems to identify it ok and
> chooses it for backup. 

This doesn't sound right, it should be something else.

If drive is partitioned and formatted (NTFS) under MS Windows [7, 10], 
it stays the same after you use it for Windows backup, any of them:

1. Windows image backup just creates big "system image" file with 
default name, changed nothing else
2. Windows 7 style backup asks which folder to use, and puts backups 
there, touched nothing else
3. Windows 10 "file history" similarly uses folder of your choice, 
leaving the rest of drive as it is.

Something is wrong with the drive and I doubt any of the above Windows 
tools are to blame.

I would mount drive read-only, copy everything elsewhere, reformat drive 
on Windows machine, copy everything back, and see if drive behaves after 
that.

I hope, it helps.

Valeri

  All pretty scary.  It's as if once set up as
> a windows-backup device, it's forever a windows-backup device and can't be
> used for anything else, despite the fact that it has some "normal" 
> directory
> hierarchies on it.
> 
> Anyway, thanks.
> 
> Gary