What to do with an NTFS external hard drive that can be read on Linux but not Windows?

What to do with an NTFS external hard drive that can be read on Linux but not Windows?

My USB external hard drive with NTFS format works just fine on Ubuntu Linux, but when I boot the same machine as Windows Vista, it no longer recognizes the drive (it used to work fine on Windows). Another Windows machine also doesn't recognize it. It shows the drive letter in Explorer but can do nothing else. I can't see the drive through cygwin.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 433

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Guest [Entry]

"When I've had this happen in the past, it has always been because the hard drive has some sort of physical sector error, etc, so I'm not sure there would be any way to fix it without reformatting. The way I've dealt with it in the past is:

Remove the hard drive from the USB casing.
Connect the drive directly to the SATA or IDE interface on my PC motherboard, depending on what type of drive it is.
Use a utility such as SpinRite to repair the drive's errors.

A free alternative that has also worked in the event I don't need to recover data off of the drive is to use Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) to wipe the drive completely, which will force the drives internal SMART logic to ""map out"" any problem sectors so that the drive will be usable again. You can just use the ""blank drive with zeros"" option in DBAN so that you don't have to wait eons for the ""secure erase"" methods to finish. This will only work if the drive isn't too badly damaged, though. If DBAN fails to blank the drive, it's probably time to buy a new drive."