Hello Chris,
On 2021-02-19 7:24 a.m., Chris Aitken wrote:
Now I can't access the folder contents. It seems by using a '?' in a file name, I've caused a problem. It was never an issue until now. I use this external SATA drive in USB docking station, and go back and forth > between ubuntu and W10 computers, to make backups.
Short Story: 1 - Find type of filesystem 2 - If EXT use fsck 3 - if FAT use dosfsck Long Story: First I would try to find out the type of file system you have on your external SATA drive. Since you go back and forth with it between Ubuntu and Win10 to make backups. Typing df -Th into a shell will show you what you need. My system is shown below. The second column 'Type' is what we want. Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 ext4 20G 15G 4.2G 78% / udev devtmpfs 10M 0 10M 0% /dev tmpfs tmpfs 1.6G 9.1M 1.5G 1% /run tmpfs tmpfs 3.8G 5.0M 3.8G 1% /dev/shm tmpfs tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock tmpfs tmpfs 3.8G 0 3.8G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs tmpfs 769M 8.0K 769M 1% /run/user/120 tmpfs tmpfs 769M 24K 769M 1% /run/user/1000 /dev/sdb6 ext4 194G 29G 156G 16% /media/aruna/200f9328-ae6b-4fe9-9d94-24ffd391bbe9 /dev/sdb5 ext3 201G 22G 169G 12% /media/aruna/3c8fce17-5948-43e7-9662-921e65c7faa7 /dev/sdb3 ext4 17G 15G 1.6G 91% /media/aruna/back-up /dev/sdb2 ext4 246G 41G 194G 18% /media/aruna/kernel-stuff /dev/sdb1 ext4 246G 21G 213G 9% /media/aruna/Ubuntu 12.04.4 L /dev/sda2 fuseblk 213G 188G 25G 89% /media/aruna/OS If it is a ext3 or ext4 type filesystem you can try and use fsck to repair any filesystem errors. MAKE CERTAIN THE FILESYSTEM IS NOT MOUNTED WHEN YOU DO THIS. YOU CAN CAUSE REAL AND SERIOUS DAMAGE IF YOU RUN fsck WHILE YOUR DISK/PARTITION IS MOUNTED. Just be careful :-) Sometimes more than one error can be found on a filesystem. In such cases you may want fsck to automatically attempt to correct the errors. This can be done with: # fsck -y /dev/sda ( I am using /dev/sda as a example please substitute your details here ) Hopefully this will resolve and repair any file system errors. If your filesystem says FAT32 or it is some FAT fiel system. Then we have to use dosfsck as shown below. sudo dosfsck -w -r -l -a -v -t /dev/sdc1 ( I am using /dev/sda5 as a example please substitute your details here ) -w means write to disk immediately. -r means to do disk check interactively (ask you what to do to when encountering errors). On newer versions of dosfsck this is the default. -l means to list the filenames processed. -a means automatically fix errors. Do not use it, if You want to have more control over fixing possible errors. -v means verbose mode. Generates slightly more output. -t means mark unreadable clusters as bad. If you want to be sure not to lose your data, create a backup of the source device first. Good Luck and happy trouble shooting :-) Aruna
On 2021-02-19 6:10 a.m., Chris Aitken wrote:
Hi, I can't rename files on my external drive in Ubuntu. I've tried a few things that people have posted about Nautilus. But this is not Nautilus - the application is just called 'Files'. Chris