no GUI solution to mount dirty NTFS drive

[oss_test_launchpad]

Binary package hint: ntfsprogs

This is a common problem for the average user: You do not unmount a HDD cleanly from a Windows machine (because Windows has no problem with this HDD when you connect it to the Windows system the next time). You connect it to an Ubuntu machine. And Ubuntu tells you it refuses to mount this HDD because it has not been unmounted cleanly before. In case you do not have a Windows machine nearby to mount and cleanly unmount the HDD again, you have to fight with cryptic terminal commands to get the HDD going.

ntfsfix offers a simpler command to solve this problem than the solution offered by Ubuntu's error message (to work with the letter you have to know Ubuntu drive name syntax). Unfortunately it has no GUI. Even more unfortunately, Ubuntu does not offer to one-click solve this problem using ntfsfix.

If there was a one-click solution the use of NTFS drives would be less a horror for Ubuntu users. Are there any legal issues which would forbid to implement this feature? Seems that with ntfsfix the basic engine for this already there.

This relates to Ubuntu 8.10 64-Bit and probably all prior Ubuntu versions.

[David Tombs (dgtombs)]

The issue here is that the dirty bit /does/ mean something: it means that the file system may be corrupted. Ubuntu has no chkdsk equivalent, so it cannot mount the drive without the risk of further corrupting it.

The real issue is that Ubuntu has no chkdsk equivalent, so perhaps this is more of a brainstorm issue.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Yep, we don't have a way to repair the dirty fs so the solution is to safely remove the device in Windows, like you are supposed to.