HOWTO: Fix an NTFS partition in Ubuntu

20Sep11

My HowTo on fixing an EXT partition in Ubuntu is by far my most popular post, pulling in new visitors everyday. The only reason I wrote it is because it was something that happened to me now and again.

But what about dual boots? What happens when your NTFS drive goes beserk, and you only have access to your Ubuntu install? Well, finally, I’ve come across a solution.

Now, before we begin, this HowTo assumes that your Ubuntu install is working as normal, and that the NTFS partition isn’t essential to Ubuntu. It’s also possible (though I’ve not yet tried) to follow this HowTo using Parted  Magic.

First, we need to find out what partition we are dealing with. To do this, open a terminal and type;

sudo fdisk -l

That’ll give you something like this;

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2709a320

 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 19457 156288321 7 HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sd1 is in this case the NTFS drive we’ll be working with. Obviously change this to whatever yours is. If your partition isn’t listed here, or appears to be the wrong size, you’ll need to use TestDisk.

Next, you need to install some software called “ntfsprogs”. You can do this through Synaptic or on the command line using;

sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs

There’s just one last step.

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb1

With any luck, you should see the following;

Mounting volume... OK
Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
NTFS volume version is 3.1.
NTFS partition /dev/sdb1 was processed successfully.

And that’s it! Go try to mount you NTFS partition, and it should work again as normal. If not, feel free to leave a comment below.

Filed under: Debian, HowTo, Operating Systems, Ubuntu   |  4 Comments
Tags: Debian, fix, HowTo, NTFS, partition, postaweek2011, Ubuntu