Am Mon, 29 Aug 2016 17:51:19 -0700
schrieb Grant <emailgr...@gmail.com>:

> > # mount -o loop,ro -t ntfs usb.img /mnt/usbstick
> > NTFS signature is missing.
> > Failed to mount '/dev/loop0': Invalid argument
> > The device '/dev/loop0' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
> > Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
> > partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?
> >
> > How else can I get my file from the ddrescue image of the USB stick?
> >
> > - Grant  
> 
> 
> Ah, I got it, I just needed to specify the offset when mounting.
> Thank you so much everyone.  Many hours of work went into the file I
> just recovered.
> 
> So I'm done with NTFS forever.  Will ext2 somehow allow me to use the
> USB stick across Gentoo systems without permission/ownership problems?

Long story short: Do not put important files on USB thumb drives. They
are known to break unexpected and horribly. They even offer silent data
corruption as a hidden feature if stored away for a few weeks or 1-2
years without ever connecting them.

By the way: Many thumb drives are internally optimized to FAT and NTFS
usage - putting anything else on them puts more stress on the internal
flash transition layer, which is most of the time very simple (some
drives only do wear leveling where the FAT tables usually are).

So using NTFS was probably not your worst decision. Ext2 (or even worse
ext3 due to its journal) may very well destroy your thumb drive faster.

I was once able to destroy a cheap thumb drive within two weeks by
putting something else on it than FAT32, and wrote some multiple 10 GBs
to it constantly in small blocks. Now it has unusable blocks spread all
over its storage space. I cannot format anything else to it than FAT32
now. I don't use it any longer. It no longer reliable stores files.

Most thumb drives also need to refresh their cells internally, this is
part of a maintenance process which runs while they are connected. So,
you even cannot use them for archive storage. Thumb drives are for
temporary storage only, to transport files. But never use them as a
single copy of important data.

-- 
Regards,
Kai

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