Question: I’m using Ubuntu 16.04 over the Windows 10 Linux subsystem. When I plug in an NTFS external hard drive (D:) I cannot access it over the bash, when I run ls -la /mnt I get the following output:

rwxr-xr-x 1 root ?root ?512 Sep 21 19:04 .drwxr-xr-x 1 root ?root ?512 Jan ?1 ?1970 ..drwxrwxrwx 1 512 Sep 21 13:06 cd? ? ? ? ? ? ddrwxrwxrwx 1 512 Sep 21 13:06 q

I also tried to mount the drive manually following this solution but the result is the same.The disk is accessible from PowerShell and from the file explorer.

Answer: So I found the problem, I had to unmount it first and the mount it again:

sudo umount /mnt/dsudo mount -t drvfs D: /mnt/d

This happened because it wasn’t the first time I had connected this USB drive. The first time WSL (Windows Linux Subsystem) recognized and mounted the device automatically. But then I unplugged it without “Safe Remove” and without unmounting it through the command line. So, next time I re-connected the disk D: appears to be mounted in /mnt/d but not properly.

💠

🔵 Best-selling data storage everyone's buying.

Fast, reliable, and on sale now. Thousands pick these weekly — don't miss Amazon's lowest storage prices.

Top 10 Bestsellers
🏆 4.7★+ Reviews
📦 Prime Shipping
👉 See today's best-selling hard drives, USB flash drives & SSDs on Amazon.com HDD · USB Flash Drives · SSD · External Drives
🛒
✅ Updated hourly — Amazon real-time ranking 🔥 Limited stock deals 🔗 Affiliate
⭐ Click to see complete best-selling list ⭐