My Internal Harddrive (HHD, Model WDC WD60EZRZ) was originally used on my Windows OS, before I detached it and installed Linux on my main SSD attached to my motherboard. After installation, I noticed my HHD did NOT have write permissions (despite showing all appropriate write permissions).
It seems to be locked by windows, and has a partition on it that reads “Microsoft Reserved”. I am wondering how I can go about allowing myself access to my HHD again, preferably without erasing the data and reformatting it.
This is due to the fact that Microsoft Windows defaults to a so-called Hybrid Sleep when you shut it down. Another name for it is Windows Fast Boot, for which many UEFI implementations have built-in support — which shouldn’t surprise anyone of course, given that Microsoft is a member of the UEFI Committee.
Concretely, what this feature does is a type of shutdown in which parts of Windows are not actually shut down. There remains some data in the drive cache, and the filesystems are left in an open state. When the Linux kernel boots, it detects this open state as filesystem damage and will mount the Windows filesystem read-only so as to prevent further damage.
The workaround is to make sure that Hybrid Sleep and Windows Fast Boot are disabled — both in Windows itself and in the UEFI settings.
If you no longer have Windows on that machine, attach the drive to a machine that does have Windows, so that you can cleanly and fully shut down that filesystem.
A workaround is to run a full fsck on the (unmounted) Windows partition from within GNU/Linux, after which the filesystem can be mounted in read/write mode again. Do however make sure you fully read and understand the man page for fsck — which has an NTFS-specific mode — before you commence.
man fsck
I’m afraid this is the only advice I can give you. I myself don’t use Microsoft Windows and as such I am not familiar with its settings.
