Two questions from a Linux n00b

[ForgottenBassist]

Well, first off I cannot open any files ending in ".gpg". it says "general error" when I try to open the file.

secondly, I have an external hard drive and is not being recognized by my computer. The external HD is a "One Touch" by Maxor I think. It just says "cannot open volume".

How can I fix these?

[yancek]

I assume you are referring to Gnu Privacy Guard files? They are not supposed to open, they're encrypted files and you need to "decrypt" them. Here's a link with some very basic info:

Linux: How to Encrypt and decrypt files with a password

Read your documentation on gpg or just google it.

What's on your external drive? Do you have any partitiions? filesystems? How do you get the "cannot open volume" error?

[ForgottenBassist]

thanks for the .gpg thing, but with the external drive, no partitions, just my backed up files that i need to put back on my computer. No partitions or anything of the sort. all i do to get the error is plug it in.

[Outcast_Aussie]

Is that drive formatted up on windows (NTFS).

If so how did you disconnect it ? No matter what you hear or read anywhere you absolutely MUST NOT just "pull the plug out". If you did that then boot back into windows and unmount it correctly before disconnecting the drive.

The reason this happens is because windows sets a flag that the drive is in use and if you just pull it out then that flag has not been unset. So nothing else can read it.

You could do a force read but it's easier to just boot into windows and let it do its thang !!

If you Did "clean disconnect" then.... DUNNO !!

[ForgottenBassist]

Is that drive formatted up on windows (NTFS).

If so how did you disconnect it ? No matter what you hear or read anywhere you absolutely MUST NOT just "pull the plug out". If you did that then boot back into windows and unmount it correctly before disconnecting the drive.

The reason this happens is because windows sets a flag that the drive is in use and if you just pull it out then that flag has not been unset. So nothing else can read it.

You could do a force read but it's easier to just boot into windows and let it do its thang !!

If you Did "clean disconnect" then.... DUNNO !!

I had my hard drive unpluged while I was downloading Ubuntu. So anyone know how to fix this? All my pictures and music is on there

[coopstah13]

run this without the drive plugged in

sudo fdisk -l

now plug it in and run that command again, post output each time