# External Hard Drive problems



## flyingtuxxie (Apr 3, 2014)

For the first time installed freebsd FreeBSD and _my_ hard drive isn't working. *T*here is a problem with mounting the drive. The drive is ok. *E*very other Linux distro, even *W*indows and Mac, is mounting the drive correctly but freebsd FreeBSD won't mount it. What is the problem*?* *A*ll _my_ backups are on the hard drive so I hope for a solution.


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## wblock@ (Apr 3, 2014)

Please provide some details.  Any, really.  What commands are you using?  What is the error message?  How is the drive connected?  What filesystem is used on the drive?


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## flyingtuxxie (Apr 3, 2014)

The filesystem is NTFS the error message is:

```
An error occured while accessing New Volume org.freedesktop.hal.device volume.unknown failure mount illegal options--usage mount[-t fstype][-o options]target_fs mount_point
```
That's the error it says me totally nothing. The external hard drive is an freecom with NTFS file system and the size is 500GB.


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## wblock@ (Apr 3, 2014)

That's a HAL error, possibly from an attempted automount.  What version of FreeBSD?  What desktop?


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## Chris_H (Apr 4, 2014)

flyingtuxxie said:
			
		

> The filesystem is NTFS the error message is:
> 
> ```
> An error occured while accessing New Volume org.freedesktop.hal.device volume.unknown failure mount illegal options--usage mount[-t fstype][-o options]target_fs mount_point
> ```





			
				flyingtuxxie said:
			
		

> That's the error it says me totally nothing. The external hard drive is an freecom with NTFS file system and the size is 500GB.


Technically. That's telling you _everything_. 
As @wblock@ already hinted at; the error is your desktop's "mount tool" (via dbus, or hal) attempting to mount the device (drive). The error message is _actually_ produced by mount() itself. You could quite possibly mount the drive manually _prior_ to starting your X session, with the following:

```
mount -t ntfs /dev/<device name of your drive> /mnt
```
But, as @wblock@ has already hinted to; you haven't provided enough information. Either of us could have given you the exact syntax to feed to mount(), had we known the device name associated with your drive.

The output from:

```
ls /dev | grep ad
```
as well as:

```
ls /dev | grep da
```
and lastly:

```
df -h
```
Would narrow down everything anyone would need to know, to answer your question with any authority. 

HTH

--Chris


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## wblock@ (Apr 5, 2014)

The version of FreeBSD matters because FreeBSD 10 has a FUSE module, and no longer has `mount_ntfs`.  The FUSE NTFS programs are sysutils/fusefs-ntfs.


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## Chris_H (Apr 5, 2014)

Really? Thanks for the update on that.

--Chris


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## flyingtuxxie (Apr 5, 2014)

Thanks problem solved but the transfer-rate of the external hard drive is very slow can i fix this. And I have an another question and have made an new topic how to configure the firewall this is my first BSD so I am unknown but I am finding my way.


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## Chris_H (Apr 5, 2014)

External drive; USB? SCSI? Firewire? NAS (networked)?
You've provided precious little detail to work with.

--Chris


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## flyingtuxxie (Apr 5, 2014)

It's an external USB device on port 4 USB 2.0.


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## Chris_H (Apr 5, 2014)

flyingtuxxie said:
			
		

> It's an extrnal usb device on port 4 usb 2.0


Ahh. That helps a bit. In all fairness, USB2 isn't very fast anyway -- roughly 128-250Mb/s, as opposed to some 480Mb/s for USB3. This will be especially noticeable, if the drive is big-ish, and has a lot of data on it. Successive seeks will run faster tho.

HTH

--Chris


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## mdg583 (May 22, 2014)

flyingtuxxie said:
			
		

> Thanks problem solved but the transfer-rate of the external hard drive is very slow can i fix this. And I have an another question and have made an new topic how to configure the firewall this is my first BSD so I am unknown but I am finding my way.



How did you solve this problem? I am having the same issue. I am trying to get the Thunar filesystem mounter to work. But the problem shows up when I run:


```
matt % gnome-mount -vtd /dev/ntfs/Windows7_OS /media/disk
gnome-mount 0.8
** Message: Mount failed for /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_F014A97214A93C8A
org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure : mount: illegal option -- m usage: mount [-t fstype] [-o options] target_fs mount_point
```

I am running FreeBSD 10.0:

```
matt % uname -a
FreeBSD thinkbsd 10.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE #0 r260789: Thu Jan 16 22:34:59 UTC 2014     root@snap.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64
```

I've loaded the fuse kernel module, and I just installed fusefs-libs and fusefs-ntfs.

I can run `/usr/local/share/hal/mount-fuse /dev/ntfs/Windows7_OS /media/disk` and that works. Does anyone know what is wrong?


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## bsdkeith (Jun 6, 2014)

Maybe you need to give the 'rehash' command it a terminal (?), it used to be needed after installing software.

N.B. I'm no expert having only just returned to trying to use FreeBSD as a desktop system again.


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## SirDice (Jun 6, 2014)

Chris_H said:
			
		

> flyingtuxxie said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Just noticed this. USB 1.x is 1.5 (low bandwidth) or 12 (full bandwidth) Mbit/s, USB 2.0 is 480 Mbit/s, USB 3.0 is 5 Gbit/s (4 Gbit/s usable). But depending on how many other devices are connected to the USB 2.0 controller you will probably never reach 480 Mbit/s.

I tested this once with an external drive that had both USB 2.0 and Firewire. Both had comparible speeds but Firewire had better throughput (because it's interfaced directly with the memory). But both pushed data around 480 Mbit/s.


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