Manjaro laptop can't open Ntfs hdd

Hello,

Recently I have installed Manjaro on my laptop and I love it. One thing I have problems with is with external media. I couldn’t open CD, DVD’s but I downloaded a CD Burning app and since then I haven’t had a problem. But the system still can’t open my external HDD formated in NTFS even tho it appears that it is mounted. It can read FAT 32 usb sticks just fine. What can I do to solve the HDD problem?

Edit: It is solved. I had to repair the HDD in windows and now it works like a charm. Thank you for the help.

Perhaps the following links will be helpful.

Additionally, you might find the gnome-disk-utility a useful abstraction from manual mounting.

sudo pacman -S gnome-disk-utility

NTFS3 is the default kernel module and should be loaded automatically; nothing extra to install. I should imagine it will just be a case of mounting your disk(s).

That said, if the disks are meant only as storage, I’d usually recommend formatting them with a native Linux filesystem (such as EXT4) instead.

Or, if they are meant simply to facilitate transfering files between Linux and Windows, consider EXFAT which is readable by both Windows and Linux (and MacOS too).

Disks can be re-partitioned and/or re-formatted using gparted, as one example.

Regards.


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Make sure you eject the device correct when it has been used with Windows.

If one fail to do so - the file system is left in a ‘dirty’ state - and the kernel driver (ntfs3) will refuse to mount the device or mount it as readonly.

To be able to access a ntfs formatted device from the file manager - on-the-fly - you will need to sync the package ntfs3g which provides a userspace driver for reading ntfs and writing.

sudo pacman -Syu ntfs-3g

Did you disable fast boot in Windows?

Fast boot hibernates the system instead of a full shutdown. This leaves the NTFS drive in a mounted state, so Linux can’t mount it.

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Truth be told beacuase of my neligence I have not safely removed it a couple of times. I tried you’r comand in terminal, I installed it, but It still does not read.
I tihnk the only thing left is to format it.

The only thing you need to do is to plug it into a Windows system to have it’s file system properly checked and repaired - which will happen automatically -
and then safely remove it …

Only the Windows chkdsk can do this - there are no reliable Linux ways.

Mod edit:- Corrected fsck to read as chkdsk as it was the logically intended tool to specify.

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Windows chkdsk will fix the file system - should need be.

But if the device is no longer intended for windows interoperability - then formatting is a good option.

My workstation running Plasma mounts and reads ntfs without issues.

My laptop however - using a minimal and minified Plasma - is not happy about the USB stick formatted with ntfs (for the purpose of testing this issue).

I need to investigate further to see what exactly is missing.

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I am using only Manjaro on my laptop, I don’t have window anymore. So this could not be the problem. I refurbished my old laptop, updated the BIOS. It had w11 and It did everything with no problems mounting reading Optical media, except not running smoothly after one week. XD

Thanks, I will try this.

Me neither.
But there are ISO’s which provide a minimalistic Windows environment which you could download and boot from … or take the disk to a trusted friends computer …

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Yea, I will have a friend take a look at it. I hope it works. Thanks for the help so far.

I realised that I had yanked the stick prematurely from my workstation after I created a test folder and a test file.

It seems ntfs is equally vulnerable when the file system is not correctly closed.

After I reformatted the stick - and copied a new file to it - and ejected it properly - the stick mounted without hick-ups on my minified system.

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Yes It worked, I repaired it in Windows and now It works like a charm.
Thank you for the help and support guys!

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Once upon a time, I managed to repair a corrupted ntfs file system from Windows XP using gparted. My neighbor from across the street baked me a cake for the occasion.

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mkay :slightly_smiling_face:
It depends on the cause, the kind and the severity of error.
Some can be fixed by ntfsfix - some cannot be and will still be present, even though you might get a clean result.
It’s a bit of a (russian) roulette game to trust Linux tools for this.

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@J.Tourney

I’m glad you’re back on track.

A note that the resolution to use chkdsk was also contained in one of the links given post #2 (that you seemingly didn’t bother to read), along with much more information to help understand many of the issues one faces when using an NTFS filesystem under Linux.

Regards.

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Don’t think I didn’t bother. I downloaded you’r links on PDF to study them later. As a casual Mac user that had everything streamlined, for me all this information is new and hard to grasp. Thank you for you’r detailed information, It didn’t go unnoticed.

All the best,
J.T

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I stand corrected.

It is what often tends to happen, nonetheless. :slight_smile:

Many seem to want an immediate fix to all their woes, without the burden of reading much more than a few lines.

A sign of the times, I suppose.

Regards.

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