I was able to fix this, but I couldn’t do it with ntfsfix inside Ubuntu 8.10 ( Linux). That failed and said to run ckdisk. I rebooted into Vista and did the filesystem check. It said that it found some lost blocks. When I rebooted back in Ubuntu I was able to get back write-access.
This incident raises several issues: Is the disk hardware vulnerable to failure due to heat? Is NTFS robust enough, including the WD Software? I am using Linux, so that means that the software may not be mature enough to catch some anamolies.
My guess is that these drives may fail-protect to RO due to heat. Can the engineering people at WD reply?
The other issue is, has a foreign filesystem type, like ext3, been tested on this device? I am tempted to slice the disk and set up a few ext3 filesystems. Anyone comment?
Bruce Salem
