I have an external hard drive that Windows can't open (gives an error message saying the file system is unrecognized and wants me to reformat), so I am trying to see if Ubuntu, which I am running as a guest vm in VirtualBox on my Win 7 host, can open it.
I am confused as to how to mount it. When I open up VirtualBox and click "Settings" for the Ubuntu vm, do I go to "Storage" and try to see if I can mount it there, or do I go down to "USB" and attempt to mount it from there? When I tried the latter, and clicked on "Enable USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller", a warning popped up from VB saying I needed to download VBox extensions to be able to select that option. So I downloaded the extensions and am unsure of what to do next. When I get into Ubuntu, how can I access the external hard drive via the command line? When I tried the command "fdisk -l", the following is printed:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/1053741/
But I have not done anything else in the VBox settings, so I don't think any of those hard drives listed are referring to the external USB drive that I want to access (even though the drive is plugged into my laptop). I do not know what drives sda1, sda2, and sda5 refer to exactly, but apparently I have an extended partition since it goes from sda1 and sda2 to sda5. When I created space for the Ubuntu virtual machine through VBox, I think I only created one main partition and one for the swap, so why is fdisk showing me 3 partitions, unless one of them is referring to the plugged in USB external hard drive, but I don't think that is it because I have not done anything else in the VBox settings for USB?
Any suggestions will be appreciated :-).
I have a Western Digital external HD of around 2TB; Windows 7 for some reason no longer allows me to open it: when I plug it into my laptop (via a USB 2.0 port), Windows either does nothing or asks me to format the drive because it doesn't recognize the file system. So I am trying to see if I can access the files in Ubuntu.
I am running Ubuntu through VirtualBox. Before starting Ubuntu, I went into the USB settings for the Ubuntu virtual machine, and selected the external hard drive (VBox sees it). Then I started Ubuntu. Here is the print out of fdisk -l:
Disk /dev/sda: 91.3 GB, 91268055040 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 11096 cylinders, total 178257920 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000d5f79
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 174583807 87290880 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 174585854 178255871 1835009 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 174585856 178255871 1835008 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.4 GB, 2000396746752 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907024896 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00020fc3
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 3907024895 1953511424 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
I believe the external drive is the bottom one, sdb1, but I have no idea how to access it. Is it already mounted or do I have to mount it manually? If Windows 7 did not recognize it, will the same problem occur in Ubuntu?
Best Answer
those three partitions are all on the same drive.
the external hard drive should show up as /dev/sdb#.
go to Devices/USB Devices on the virtualbox window and select your external hard drive. now the drive should be mounted automatically by Ubuntu