How I Fixed My Seagate External Hard Drive Mounting Issue on Ubuntu 24.04

Problem:

Clicking my Seagate hard drive icon in Ubuntu's GUI suddenly gave an error like :

“error mounting seagate bad errorblock on /dev/sdb" or "wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock”

Manual Mounting

• I tried manually mounting the drive through terminal :

  sudo mkdir /mnt/mydrive
  sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/mydrive
  ...access your files...
  sudo umount /dev/sdb1

But this showed an error : "$MFTMirr does not match $MFT"

So I ran:

sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ntfs-3g exfat-fuse exfatprogs

My HDD was NTFS-based (you can check it by running lsblk -f command). So I ran :

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb1

• Now the sudo mount command worked, confirming the drive and data were accessible, but the GUI still failed.

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Adjusting Mount Options in Disks App

(I learnt this from https://askubuntu.com/a/1517406/519832)

• I opened the Disks app, selected my drive, and clicked the cog wheel (settings).
• Chose Edit Mount Options…
• Turned off User Session Defaults.
• Adjusted other mount parameters as needed (e.g., mount point, mount at startup).
• Saved the changes.

Now, the drive mounts from the GUI as before. But remember to properly unmount before removing your HDD.

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