Resolving USB disk issues 🗃️🔧after a Linux crash 🐧.

The USB disk, connected during an Ubuntu crash, did not mount after the system rebooted.

Tux locked in a comical showdown with a stubborn USB disk!

What triggered the issue

My Ubuntu 22.04 desktop unexpectedly froze while I was editing a text file located on a USB-mounted removable disk. With no other option, I had to shut down the system using the power switch. To my relief, the system rebooted safely and without issues. However, when I reconnected the USB disk, it refused to mount. After investigating the problem, I discovered the following remedy.

The Solution

If an Ubuntu 22.04 system crashed and cannot mount a USB disk after a reboot, the issue could be:

The filesystem got dirty or corrupted.
The USB was not cleanly unmounted before the crash.
The system services responsible for mounting (like udisks2) are unstable.

Let’s go through this step-by-step recovery.

🧭 1. Check if the USB is detected at all.

Plug the USB in and run:

$ lsblk -f
$ sudo dmesg | tail -n 30
Password

Upon inspection, dmesg reported:

[ 777.748071] sda: sda1
[ 777.748454] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
[ 781.521521] ntfs3: sda1: It is recommened to use chkdsk.
[ 781.628866] ntfs3: sda1: volume is dirty and "force" flag is not set!

This indicates that the USB drive (/dev/sda1) uses the NTFS filesystem, and Ubuntu’s NTFS3 driver is refusing to mount it automatically due to the following reason:

“volume is dirty and ‘force’ flag is not set”

In other words, the filesystem wasn’t cleanly closed, likely because of the crash or because the drive was disconnected without being safely unmounted.

🧩 What’s happening

NTFS keeps a “dirty bit” to mark that Windows (or Linux) didn’t close the filesystem cleanly. Ubuntu’s driver (ntfs3) sees that bit and refuses to mount to avoid data loss.

✅ Safe Fix — Quick Linux Fix (with ntfsfix)

$ sudo ntfsfix /dev/sda1

This will:

Clear the dirty bit.
Fix some basic NTFS inconsistencies.
Schedule a deeper check for next Windows mount (if applicable).

Once I executed sudo ntfsfix /dev/sda1, the USB disk mounted without issue through the GUI, and a Dolphin window opened displaying its root directory.

💡Inspect and safely remove the USB disk:

1 Open a terminal in the USB disk’s root directory:

Right-click on an empty area within the Dolphin window displaying the root of the USB disk.
Select “Open Terminal” from the context menu.
A terminal window will open, already set to the USB disk’s root directory.

2 Check the disk contents:

Use commands like ls and cd to browse and verify the files as needed.

3 Close the terminal when done.

4 Safely remove the USB disk:

In Dolphin’s left sidebar, under Removable Devices, locate the USB disk label.
Right-click it and select “Safely Remove”.
Once unmounted, you can physically unplug the USB disk.

Conclusion

So the issue was indeed a “dirty” NTFS filesystem caused by the system crash. Running sudo ntfsfix /dev/sda1 cleared the dirty bit and repaired the basic filesystem metadata, allowing Ubuntu to mount the disk again.

If it happens again ntfsfix is safe to re-run.