Excellent distribution, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of YouTube videos: the frame rate has increased (compared to Ubuntu). Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks: sometimes external drives won’t mount, both internal and external (USB). I have to boot Ubuntu and fix file system errors using disks. This is the only program that allows me to mount devices; similar programs in KDE don’t work. Could you tell me how to fix this problem in Manjaro?
See the Contributions > Tutorials section
Example
Which file system are used on said disks?
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I have ntfs on my HDD
That might explain it. Do you need NTFS specifically? Could you not change it to ext4? Or even exfat, if you need it for Windows?
Yes, i need it for Windows
Then I recommend exfat.
Okay, if I format my external HDD and all my flash drives to exfat, then they will open reliably?
I imagine so. NTFS is not a reliable filesystem, and even less so in Linux.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT:
exFAT can be used where NTFS is not a feasible solution
(due to data-structure overhead), but where a greater file-size limit than that of the standard FAT32 file system (i.e. 4 GB) is required.
I scratched out that sentence because it’s not really your case.
If you have an NTFS partition/Disk with Windows on, just be sure not to wipe that one.
Also see:
Check the disk in Windows, and make sure Windows shuts down properly.
That will wipe out your files, back them up to another drive first.
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I used Ubuntu for about 7 years, and I had these same problems. I was fixing the file system of external devices in Windows, then someone on a forum told me how to use Disks, and I was quite satisfied. Ubuntu supports NTFS quite well. But I don’t know what causes these periodic file system corruptions on external devices. Windows doesn’t have these problems (but it has many other problems). Thank you very much for the advice; I’ll probably use Manjaro alongside Ubuntu.
Well, considering NTFS is non-standards compliant file system, developed by Microsoft only for Windows, I’d kind of hope it doesn’t have these problems.
I think this is because 3 of two reasons, or a combination of all of 'em:
- Canonical has been known to adopt Windows-like behavior. Look at snaps, for example. They update automatically in the background and as far as I’m aware that can’t be changed. This all gives you less control of your computer.
- Microsoft has worked with Canonical in the past. I don’t know about what. I wouldn’t put it past them to collude on something like this.
- Canonical could still be using the old
ntfs-3gdriver for opening the disks, which would happily mount an NTFS partition, even if it has errors.
The best would be as @dmt said:
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Thanks for the clarification. Well, I’ll slowly transition to exfat. I really enjoyed Manjaro with Wayland, and I wish your team continued success.
I would not recommend to use exfat, it’s not a journalling file system. Try to find the source of your issues. The reason of your issues could be the way you mount the file system or by not properly shutting Windoze down which is known then to set the dirty bit. Especially the ntfs3 driver is a bit picky in these cases. ntfs-3g is more tolerant as already mentioend by others. If properly organized ntfs can be very reliably used via Linux, I had zero issues in all kind of scenarios and even power loss while using was no issue, it recovered well without requirement to use any chkdsk operation.
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It is recommended to regularly run Microsoft’s chkdsk on ntfs volumes as a matter of general and preventative maintenance. Doing so will typically reduce instances of accumulated filesystem damage.
To expand a little on exfat, which was mentioned above:
The filesystem is sometimes chosen for external USB devices for convenience, as it tends to be generally easy to work with and is readable by multiple platforms (Windows, Linux, BSD, MacOS).
That is where the convenience ends.
As @Wollie mentioned, Microsoft’s ntfs is a journaling filesystem – Apple’s apfs is another example of a journaling filesystem.
A journaling filesystem infers many capabilities – among them is the ability to recover personal data that might otherwise have been lost due to filesystem damage – exfat doesn’t have that capability; what’s lost, is gone for good.
Using ntfs with Linux requires extra care; extra maintenance; be performed regulary – it’s not “set and forget” as many seem to treat it in Windows.
The following information may be invaluable in understanding how best to handle ntfs filesystems when accessed by Linux.
For consideration:
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