Hello,
Sorry I’m sure this question was asked before but I couldn’t find the solution to fix it.
I’m new to manjaro. I have both M2 SSD & HDD. Comming from Windows I installed Manjaro on M2 but not I’m unable to access the files on my 1TB HDD.
I have disabled fast boot & secure boot
I ran
sudo parted -l
Model: ATA HGST HTS721010A9 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 538MB 537MB fat32 msftdata
2 538MB 1000GB 1000GB lvm
Model: Samsung SSD 960 EVO 500GB (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 2097kB 317MB 315MB fat32 boot, esp
2 317MB 491GB 490GB ext4 root
3 491GB 500GB 9449MB linux-swap(v1) swap
And
efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0002
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0002,0001
Boot0001* UEFI OS
Boot0002* UEFI OS
The only thing we know about that partition is that is uses (almost) your full HDD, and that it has the “lvm” flag. Digging a bit, it seems Windows cannot read LVM partitions, so it seems unlikely it’s the one that put it there.
LVM is commonly used on Linux for encrypting drives. Do you remember doing anything related to this?
Maybe you can try using lvm2 to check what is inside: LVM - ArchWiki
Otherwise, that partition is as good as empty…
I actually never heard of LVM used in encryptying drives.
AFAIK, LVM is the technology used in the old BIOS MBR to extend the maximum of 4 partitions, like when you use the old fdisk application to partition drive.
As the old MBR can only have up to 4 primary partitions, the only way to extend partitions is to have 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition. And you set the extended partition to LVM, so you can create more virtual partitions, thus the naming “Logical Volume Management”. Virtual partitions also make it easier to expand and shrink partition size because then’re no such thing as neighbouring partition (neighbouring partitions only exist in physical partition).
In short, LVM is a virtual partitions technology, in the same sense as virtual machines. That’s why you don’t see mounted filesytem in LVM.
As I recall about LVM, your LVM in this HDD is empty. No virtual partitions has been made. Again, as I recall, you should see partitions listed below the LVM partition (known by the flags) had you made virtual partitions previously.
But your HDD partition table is already GPT, so you don’t actually need LVM and can just reformat that partition to physical partitions. Plus your LVM partition is empty (no virtual partitions).
FYI: The limitation of 4 primary partitions in MBR is one of 2 main reasons why GPT was conceived, as GPT can support many partitions (don’t remember how many, but too many for normal use). The other main reason is that MBR drive max size is ~2TB.
