Manjaro incorrectly identifing partition size of Windows install

Support
1

Hello, so currently on my machine I have a Windows install on a 3.6 TiB RAID 10 array that I would like to dual boot Manjaro Linux on. I have done so in the past but this time I’m experiencing something weird with the Windows partition.

In theory, the installer should see the Windows EFI partition, the 3.6 TiB NTFS partition, and then the recovery partition. But instead, it only sees a 116GiB partition. Now I looked at this through KDE Partition Manager and it sees the same thing, however, it reports the size as 116Gib and that 1.2 TiB of 116Gib is used (witch dose not add up).

But on the other hand, Gnome Disk Utility reports the volume to be 4TB (3.6 TiB) in size, and so dose dolphin file manager as well.

Beyond that I cannot figure out what is causing the problem to occur and why its happening now.

From what I gathered, I accused Windows hybrid shutdown / hibernate as the culprit and disabled “fast boot” within control panel and with powercfg /h off as administrator, in witch that did not fix the problem.

And as far as RAID goes, I use Intel RTSe RAID from the bios for the RAID setup and never really had problems with it (beside a Rosewill HDD hot swap bay) and use it in the past as /home when running strait Linux.

Any Ideas?

Edit: Ok so an update
So I had decreased the Windows partition down to make some free space ahead of time before the Manjaro install. This left me with 2.6TiB for Windows and ~1TiB for Manjaro. Instead the free spaced showed up as ~160GiB for the free space and ~80GiB for the Windows partition. I’ll try different Linux Distros to see if they report the same issues.

Edit #2:
So I booted into a Kubuntu installer image and Kubuntu is able to see the Windows partition correctly, so from what I can speculate that Manjaro is the issue in this situation (or whatever the installer sees).

2

not only in manjaro but in arch and garuda too they once formatted my whole drive if they are dynamic volumes they cannot detect and install in them

3

I mean at least from what I am aware (and according to Disk Management) the RAID disk that Windows is installed onto is a basic disk. I really don’t get any of it. The EFI partition is reality 100MB but is 13 according to the installer. And with Gnome Disk Utility, im able to shrink the 4TB partition to two 2TB partitions, but the installer sees two 50GB partitions. I just don’t get it.

4

Do you use windows dynamic raid or the Intel RST Raid for the windows partitions?

Ubuntu can detect Intel RST Raid (dmraid) automatically, while Manjaro and Arch based Systems can not. You will need to setup dmraid and do a fully manual installation. I believe calamares can not handle dmraid also.

5

Do you use windows dynamic raid or the Intel RST Raid for the windows partitions?

I used Intel RTSe for the RAID. But what weird is that I never used a software RAID setup (in the context of Linux that is, because I never really played around with Linux software RAID solutions and Intel RTSe I was expecting to see as like a LSI RAID setup with just the volume). And the Manjaro installer allays played nice with it in the past when the primary partition was /home. Its weird but I look more at it.

Now with “calamares” installer, would Manjaro architect work in this case?

6

Possible. But it would be nice if you could give some more information about you partitioning…

sudo parted -l

sudo dmraid -l

lsblk -o PATH,FSTYPE,PARTTYPENAME,MOUNTPOINT
7

From parted -l:

Error: /dev/sda: unrecognised disk label
Model: ATA WDC WD20EZRZ-00Z (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: unknown
Disk Flags:

Error: Invalid argument during seek for read on /dev/sdb
Retry/Ignore/Cancel? i
Error: The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears OK, so that will be used.
OK/Cancel? ok
Model: ATA WDC WD20EZRZ-00Z (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: unknown
Disk Flags:

Error: /dev/sdc: unrecognised disk label
Model: ATA WDC WD20EZRZ-00Z (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: unknown
Disk Flags:

Error: Invalid argument during seek for read on /dev/sdd
Retry/Ignore/Cancel? i
Error: The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears OK, so that will be used.
OK/Cancel? ok
Model: ATA WDC WD20EZRZ-00Z (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdd: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: unknown
Disk Flags:

Model: Linux Software RAID Array (md)
Disk /dev/md126: 4001GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                          Flags
 1      1049kB  106MB   105MB   fat32        EFI system partition          boot, esp
 2      106MB   123MB   16.8MB               Microsoft reserved partition  msftres
 3      123MB   2007GB  2007GB  ntfs         Basic data partition          msftdata


Warning: Unable to open /dev/sr1 read-write (Read-only file system).  /dev/sr1 has been opened read-only.
Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!
Ignore/Cancel? ignore
Model: Unknown (unknown)
Disk /dev/sr1: 2884MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 2048B/2048B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
2      11.5GB  11.5GB  16.8MB  primary               esp

And from dmraid -l:

asr     : Adaptec HostRAID ASR (0,1,10)
ddf1    : SNIA DDF1 (0,1,4,5,linear)
hpt37x  : Highpoint HPT37X (S,0,1,10,01)
hpt45x  : Highpoint HPT45X (S,0,1,10)
isw     : Intel Software RAID (0,1,5,01)
jmicron : JMicron ATARAID (S,0,1)
lsi     : LSI Logic MegaRAID (0,1,10)
nvidia  : NVidia RAID (S,0,1,10,5)
pdc     : Promise FastTrack (S,0,1,10)
sil     : Silicon Image(tm) Medley(tm) (0,1,10)
via     : VIA Software RAID (S,0,1,10)
dos     : DOS partitions on SW RAIDs

And then lsblk -l:

PATH         FSTYPE          PARTTYPENAME MOUNTPOINT
/dev/loop0   squashfs                     /run/miso/sfs/livefs
/dev/loop1   squashfs                     /run/miso/sfs/mhwdfs
/dev/loop2   squashfs                     /run/miso/sfs/desktopfs
/dev/loop3   squashfs                     /run/miso/sfs/rootfs
/dev/sda     isw_raid_member
/dev/sdb     isw_raid_member
/dev/sdc     isw_raid_member
/dev/sdd     isw_raid_member
/dev/md126
/dev/md126
/dev/md126
/dev/md126
/dev/sr0
/dev/sr1     iso9660                      /run/miso/bootmnt
/dev/md126p1 vfat
/dev/md126p1 vfat
/dev/md126p1 vfat
/dev/md126p1 vfat
/dev/md126p2
/dev/md126p2
/dev/md126p2
/dev/md126p2
/dev/md126p3 ntfs
/dev/md126p3 ntfs
/dev/md126p3 ntfs
/dev/md126p3 ntfs
8

Intel RST (not RTS :wink: ) is a Software Raid Solution which has in addition some hardware support. It is combination of firmware, chipset and CPU capabilities, and software. It is not a full raid controller, but “fake raid”, but at the end a software raid like mdadm with some extras. I guess the only advanced over a software raid is the “early redundancy mode” which rebuilds the chunks before any OS has been started and protect the data this way. Everything else is managed by the CPU.

An advantage of this model over the pure software RAID is that—if using a redundancy mode—the boot drive is protected from failure (due to the firmware) during the boot process even before the operating system’s drivers take over

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Firmware-_and_driver-based

ok you have 4 drives with raid10. It seems to be detected normally. /dev/md126p1 vfat would be then the “efi partition” ?

But strange is that parted can’t recognize the partitions… and parted is also used by calamares.

Are you able to mount the partitions and interact with them?

Sorry, I have never touched a “fake raid” or “hardware-assisted raid” ever. I have always done this with pure software raid or nowadays i do this with the builtin raid support of btrfs.

9

is it mbr or gpt?
if gpt try mbr

10

The system is GPT, but Windows is installed under UEFI/GPT so (I imagine) that Manjaro would need to be under UEFI/GPU.

In addition too, the installer under BIOS boot only sees the 4 disk and not the RAID volume it self.

11

do you have any important data in the disk
if you dont have you can format it in mbr and change the uefi to legacy
the reason i said is because my disk also had gpt and garuda linux incorectly identified partition since i had no data in it i made an mbr partition table and everything worked

12

do you have any important data in the disk

Yes, the Windows OS is installed on the disk

the reason i said is because my disk also had gpt and garuda linux incorectly identified partition since i had no data in it i made an mbr partition table and everything worked.

I had Windows auto make the partition (ie: Welcome to windows, pick a disk, install, etc) so I don’t think that was up to me. And also, Linux under MBR/BIOS dose not see the RAID array just the 4 disk with “unknown” on them.

13

OK so an update,

I used Ubuntu to create a EXT4 partition (empty to mount / to) manually so that maybe the installer mite see the partition and recognize it (kinda force its hand a little bit).

However, now it only sees just a single 64GiB “unknown” partition. And the rest is empty. However, I’m going to try Kubuntu (sense it detects the Windows partition correctly) and then distro hop to Manjaro and experiment around a bit.

14

OK so It works … kinda

So I got hardware and made a windows backup and YOLO’ed installed Manjaro despite the installer reporting wrong installer size. And so far the Windows installer is OK.

But initramfs seems to fail every time it boots saying its unable to mount the root device.

15

So the thing with MBR is that the UEFI firmware will not boot of a Intel RTSe MBR RAID array (the same deal with m.2 ssd’s NVME or SATA) the RAID volume contains both Windows and Manjaro.

But due to other issues, yea I have a backup made and used it a couple times already.