What does the "permissions" say in that folder? Modified 6/Sep/23

I added new information and screenshots. This is so strange.

Please edit your question to include the output of findmnt --fstab and findmnt /media/*/* ... Make sure you expand the terminal's with to show all the output before you copy it.

Looks like you have write permission for that folder but no read permission. Please also provide output of ls -ld /media/user/easystore/Family

Added results of Terminal commands.

It appears to be an NTFS partition that is manually mounted ... Please show us the command that you use to mount /dev/sdb1 on /media/user/easystore or is it mounted by a script? then pleases show us the script.

Easystore is an external hard drive that I connect to my laptop via a USB port.

I haven't seen the mount option default_pre before and I don't know what it is or where it came from in your mount ... and fuseblk is an indexation of not automatically mounted by udisks2 but rather another mechanism ... Finding that information would help.

I was good up until your last request. I'm kind of new so what you're saying is foreign to me. What terminal command should I use to get the information you need?

It would be easier to unmount the partition with sudo umount /dev/sdb1 then make a new mount point with mkdir ~/my_mount then mount as an NTFS with sudo mount -t ntfs3 /dev/sdb1 ~/my_mount then go to the directory called my_mount in your user's home directory to see if things work as expected and your files show now.

I'm new to that procedure, but I'll follow those steps exactly and report back. Thank you for your time and expertise.

Either the ntfs3 kernel driver is not loaded, the partition table is damaged/missing or the filesystem on the partition is not NTFS … Please add the output of sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb … Please also copy and paste the text from the terminal instead of a screenshot as it’s much easier for us to read this way.

Raffa, here are the results: user@user:~$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb [sudo] password for user: Disk /dev/sdb: 4.55 TiB, 5000947302400 bytes, 9767475200 sectors Disk model: easystore 266A Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disklabel type: gpt Disk identifier: 70C773EC-5005-45E2-A2EE-9D572C9ED770 Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/sdb1 2048 9767473151 9767471104 4.5T Microsoft basic data I hope you have good news for me.

Still good so far ... Please also add the output lsblk -f /dev/sdb to your question as text.

As you wish: user@user:~$ lsblk -f /dev/sdb NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS sdb └─sdb1 ntfs easystore AA88CA8888CA528D 4.2T 8% /media/user/easystore

And the output of lsmod | grep ntfs please.

@Raffa I guess mount -t ntfs3 uses wrong mount option. It should be either mount -t ntfs or mount -t ntfs3g.

user@user:~$ lsmod | grep ntfs ntfs3 335872 0

How do I fix the wrong mount option?

@mook765 Both ntfs and ntfs3 should work as the latter is the successor of the old ntfs3g kernel driver in current kernels … See for example askubuntu.com/a/1477972 .., The kernel module appears to be loaded and yet not used by any process 0 while an NTFS partition is mounted ! .,, The question is why?

hi @raffa The main difference I noticed for findmnt when compared with my own external drive is mine says: FSTYPE=ntfs3 not: FSTYPE=fuseblk. Here's complete line: /media/admn/4TB /dev/sdi1 ntfs3 rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,iocharset=utf8. Would it make any difference? My OS: Ubuntu MATE Lunar 23.04. Thanks.

@Jags That is the normal mount expected when automatically mounted by udisks2 including the user and group id 1000 for your normal invoking user .., But the fuseblk and id's of 0 seen in the question along with some non-standard mount options are not normal for default udisks2 behavior … Therefore, I guess there must be something else interfering with the mounting processes not clear for me yet … @R.P. Can you please confirm the user and group id of your current user user?

Please also add the output of journalctl --grep='/dev/sdb|fuseblk' --no-pager --since="-1week" … Add those by editing your question please.

@Raffa, when you ask to confirm the user and group id, do you mean here in AskUbuntu? I'm not sure how to do that. Also, I did journalctl --grep='/dev/sdb|fuseblk' --no-pager --since="-1week" and two pages came up. I think that's too much to post here. Please advise.

I meant the output of id "$USER" for the first one ... And two pages is OK just add it by editing your question above and I will help you format it if it needs to.

user@user:~$ id "$USER" uid=1000(user) gid=1000(user) groups=1000(user),4(adm),24(cdrom),27(sudo),30(dip),46(plugd‌​ev),122(lpadmin),133‌​(lxd),134(sambashare‌​)

The two pages...should I copy and paste, or screen shot?

copy and paste as text please ... Just below my last edit to your question

I pasted it in the question area and I got this: Body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 32435.

We need the recent logs more the than the oldest ones ... The oldest log lines are at the top of the output ... So remove a few lines from the top until it fits and add it ... And then I will trim it even more.

I hope I did that correctly.

Yes, you did. Thanks ... How old is the external drive? Has it encountered any falls, hits or harsh operation environments? ... Is your USB cable in good shape? can you swap it with another and check? ... Is the USB port you connect to in your computer in good shape? Can you connect to another one and check? ... Can you connect this drive to another computer (any OS) and check?

The first checks I asked in my comment above are because can't read superblock on /dev/sdb1 in your logs ... And the last check is because ntfs-3g driver appears in your logs which is odd on Ubuntu 22.04

I just bought the external hard drive a few months ago at Best Buy. It never took a fall, hit or harsh environments. The USB cable came with the external and by looks of it is in good shape. I plugged the external in another laptop and the only problem is with this Family folder which still shows nothing in it. I also plugged the external in another USB in my main laptop and the Family folder is still showing empty. But when I paste a photo in it, it says there is one just like it already there. So strange. Every other folder works perfectly.

Unfortunately, that leaves one of two probabilities ... 1) filesystem corruption ... 2) Hard drive failure ... If you have another copy backup on another drive of stuff on this drive, then attempt filesystem checks and fixes as well as a drive SMART test ... If you have no backup, then disconnect the drive and take it to a data recovery specialist ... Furthermore, your question now includes most of the needed diagnosis to help future readers suggest other solutions if they exist.

Thank you @Raffa for all your help. One last question. Do you feel that this external hard drive is a lemon? Can it be trusted to continue to use and back up my files?

Hardware damage can happen unintentionally during shipping/handling and filesystem corruption happen regularly on all drives ... It wouldn't be fair or just from my side to say the drive is a "lemon" based only on that information, but it could be ... A rule of thumb, is multiple backup copies on multiple media is the right way to do it.

This is truly the last question: Can you please explain what this means? uid=1000(user) gid=1000(user) groups=1000(user),4(adm),24(cdrom),27(sudo),30(dip) It looks like there are four administrators and 27 super users... Am I reading this wrong? I'm the only one who uses this laptop. I would like to be the only one who has access to this laptop and to the operating system and it's programs. Sorry if this is a stupid newbie question [Only a 2 year user of Linux Ubuntu and one year at AskUbuntu].

Not at all ... the numbers are for the system while the names between (...) are for us humans ... for example 27 is how the system identifies the sudo group ... See for example the output of getent group sudo

So am I the only one with access to this laptop, OS, and programs?

If for example the output of getent group sudo is exactly sudo:x:27:user, then that means you are the only user in the sudo group ... and so on ... An easy way to check users and groups on your system is through system setting in your GUI desktop environment.

@Raffa, Thank you again and again. Being a newbie to Linux Ubuntu, do you have any recommendations on how I can learn more? Would love to be on your level, or at least above the low level I'm at :-)

You are most welcome .., As for "learning more" you have just done some quiet (I guess) quality learning in this post alone … Not only that, but rather shared that knowledge with others (some upvotes most likely comes from people who learned something new from your post) … This is after all what we are doing here ( share and get quality peer-reviewed knowledge) … So, I think you know that already this site can actually be a trusted source of everything Ubuntu in particular and Linux in general … You probably want to set your goal as e.g. power user, system admin .., etc. and dig into posts :)

hi @raffa going thru journalctl I noticed: sdb: Process '/usr/bin/unshare -m /usr/bin/snap auto-import --mount=/dev/sdb' failed with exit code 1. This sounds happening alot with USB & even NVMe drives. https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1966203. Workaround suggested is, either remove/rename snapd-autoimport.rules. Do you think, something like this worth a try: sudo mv /lib/udev/rules.d/66-snapd-autoimport.rules /lib/udev/rules.d/66-snapd-autoimport.rules.bak and: sudo rm /lib/udev/rules.d/66-snapd-autoimport.rules; then remove & reconnect USB drive or reboot the system. Thanks.

@Jags AFAIK that’s merely cosmetic and shouldn’t need to be addressed at all as long as your media mounts correctly which seems to be the case from your earlier comment … So, I wouldn’t bother with that at all.

@Raffa, how do I give you a green check mark here in Ask Ubuntu?

You don’t unless I post an answer which I won’t ;-) as I don’t feel like I actually offered a true solution to your issue … But, if you thankfully document in an answer to your question the troubleshooting process and commands that you feel helped you the most to at least reach a better understanding of the problem and then mark your answer, then this would probably help others in the future and I really hope you do so.

@Jags Not even this one … No, the logs show a rather more serious problems … If I had to throw a guess as to what’s wrong with that family directory, I would say filesystem corruption and particularly in that directory's parent inode meta-data along with the superblock as well… Good precise search from your side by the way and a good error catching :-)

@raffa thanks alot for clarifying :)