"Volume is scheduled for check..."

Well, the best solution is to do what it says, boot twice in Windows. If you don't have Windows you shouldn't really use NTFS.
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Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs

Jerry, unless you have a need to share the partitions with Windows because you use the drive with that other OS, then I agree with AdrianTM. The NTFS system is very touchy. It is only recently usable for read AND WRITE because of new ntfs-3g drivers that are part of the current version of Mepis (and some other Linux distros).

If you want to share the partitions with many other computers, then you should opt to use the fat32 file system. This is readable/writable by ALL OSes. But it does not have any type of security or journaling built in.

If you are only using this drive for Linux, please consider using ext3, or reiserfs (3) for the file system. Both of these are journaled file systems, and so provide some protection. And they also have standard Linux permissions built in (if that's important).

NTFS sucks, except when it is the absolute last-ditch, necessary, must-be-used, no-other-option file system

Jon

No computer is magic, no operating system is magic, no website is magic. They all require human interaction, thought, and responsibility to work.

This drive was attached to my XP desktop, and I used it to back up all data before installing MEPIS. I didn't format it to NTFS myself. And the other sections are mountable and readable/writeable.

The point is: given this situation, what options do I have? I can hook up my laptop to the drive if necessary and use the XP side to remove the data and reformat, but I am hoping there is less troublesome way.

Any advice other than "don't use NTFS"?

A couple of suggestions Jerry.

First, a question. What are these four partitions used for? A second question: Can you consolidate some info from one or more of the partitions so that you can fix/cleanup/modify the other parititions? Lacking that, do you have some place where you can "temporarily" store the data?

The error you mention in your first post is (probably) due to not having a mount point. Open a konsole, "su" to root (and enter root's password). Do the following command:

mkdir /mnt/windows

Then try your command above again. Let us know what you see.

I would also get a copy of the Gparted Live CD if it's possible for you to download. The current version of Mepis contains Gparted also, but the Gparted Live CD is a wonderful way to "backup and restore" partitions.

Let me know if you would like to consider doing any "data conversion", or more accurately, copying your data from an NTFS partition, changing it/them to a different type, and copying things back.

Jon

No computer is magic, no operating system is magic, no website is magic. They all require human interaction, thought, and responsibility to work.

The four sections are for: presentations, old backup, Keep backup, and images. There is room to move the images into at least two of those.

I am downloading gparted now, will try your suggestions when work is over.

I think it's best to hook it to XP and check the partition from within XP, then for the future you might repartition it however you want, but using another format. Writing to NTFS works but I've heard it's slow, and you also might encounter this kind of issues.
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Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs