Everything was going so well

[JMac]

@sdetweil sorry to be dense how do I know what I’m unmounting?
am I unmounting /dev/mmcblk0p1?? it says thats mounted on /boot.

edit to add,
after re running sudo fdisk -l it would appear the old memory card (with my previous MM setup on) is on Disk /dev/sda

thats classed as Disk Model: storage device (as it’s mounted in the usb drive atm) does this seem correct? is this the one which needs unmounting?

[sdetweil]

@JMac well mounted means accessible by the filesystem

so it’s /dev/sda
the usb installed sd card

so

sudo unmount /dev/sda
and then run fsck on that

[JMac]

so I run the command sudo umount /dev/sda
and get
umount: /dev/sda: not mounted.

so should now go,
e2fsck -f -v /dev/sda
not the original
e2fsck -f -v mmcblk0p2

?

[sdetweil]

@JMac correct… you had to find the disk name

[JMac]

@sdetweil when i run e2fsck…
I get
e2fsck: permission denied while trying to open /dev/sda
you must have r/w access to the filesystem or be root.

[sdetweil]

@JMac yes, you must use sudo on both commands unmount and fsck

sorry I was unclear

normal users should not be able to mess with hardware, so one must act as root

[JMac]

@sdetweil I run sudo umount…
and get
umount:… not mounted,

then run
sudo e2fsck -f -v /dev/sda
and get
e2fsck 1.46.2 (28-feb-2021)
/dev/sda is in use
efsck: connot continue, aborting.

[sdetweil]

@JMac hm… wonder what is using it?

can you open the disks app on the pi from the dedktop menu

[JMac]

@sdetweil on the home screen I have 2 drive icons under the wastebasket.
one is boot
the other is rootfs

i then have the option to eject these in the file manager

[sdetweil]

@JMac there should be that drive on /dev/sda too