i have just transitioned from windows to manjaro to try out Linux as my daily driver! I had all my personal fines stored on a separate SSD drive. It’s showing up in my Devices tab inside the file explorer but I’m only able to copy/ view the files. i cant delete anything or cut. When I check the "New volume"s properties it shows that i have read/write permission so I don’t know why its restericted…
What is the response that you get
when you try to remove a file
like in:
rm /path/to/your_file
(in/from a terminal)
?
- Windows dual boot?
- The partition you want readwrite access to is NTFS?
The likely cause is Windows Fast startup and/or hibernation which is leaving the filesystem in a dirty state - effectively blocking the linux driver from making changes to the file system.
Disable Fast startup and hibernation in Windows and ensure a clean shutdown of Windows - then you write to your NTFS partition.
Please provide your global and partitioning information.
user@hostname$ rm -rf Dev/
rm: cannot remove 'Dev': Read-only file system
- Not a Windows dual boot. I have Installed Manjaro on the windows drive.
- yes the partition is NTFS.
So unfortunately I can’t go into windows to disable Fast startup 
- global information formatted to only have information on drives:
The drive causing the issue is:
ntfs /run/media/avarma/'New Volume'
RAID:
Message: No RAID data found.
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 1.38 TiB used: 62.18 GiB (4.4%)
SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 maj-min: 259:0 vendor: A-Data model: SX8200PNP
size: 476.94 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 31.6 Gb/s
lanes: 4 type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 32B2T6TA temp: 30.9 C scheme: GPT
ID-2: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 860 EVO 1TB
size: 931.51 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s
type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 4B6Q scheme: GPT
Message: No optical or floppy data found.
Partition:
ID-1: / raw-size: 476.64 GiB size: 468.09 GiB (98.21%)
used: 37.86 GiB (8.1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 maj-min: 259:2
label: N/A uuid: a37a148e-063a-48e6-9333-8ed75d826eaf
ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 300 MiB size: 299.4 MiB (99.80%)
used: 288 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1 maj-min: 259:1
label: NO_LABEL uuid: 4C2C-7676
ID-3: /run/media/avarma/New Volume raw-size: 931.5 GiB
size: 931.5 GiB (100.00%) used: 24.32 GiB (2.6%) fs: ntfs dev: /dev/sda2
maj-min: 8:2 label: New Volume uuid: 7A9E7D919E7D4723
Swap:
Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default)
ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 512 MiB used: 1.5 MiB (0.3%) priority: -2
file: /swapfile
Unmounted:
ID-1: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1 size: 16 MiB fs: <superuser required>
label: N/A uuid: N/A
- Partitioning Information
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/gtk-common-themes/1519
loop1 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/snapd/15177
loop2
loop3 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/bare/5
loop4 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/core18/2344
loop5 squashfs 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/gnome-3-28-1804/161
loop6
loop7
sda
├─sda1
└─sda2 ntfs New Volume 7A9E7D919E7D4723 907.2G 3% /run/media/avarma/New Volume
nvme0n1
├─nvme0n1p1 vfat FAT32 NO_LABEL 4C2C-7676 299.1M 0% /boot/efi
└─nvme0n1p2 ext4 1.0 a37a148e-063a-48e6-9333-8ed75d826eaf 406.4G 8% /
Since you no longer has Windows installed - backup the data and reformat the device to ext4
What this tells you is:
it is as stated - a read only file system
deleting requires write access
apparently it is a windows/ntfs file system
perhaps it is not properly unmounted because windows was not shut down properly - it is then marked as “dirty” and will be mounted read only by linux
This may help: NTFS-3G - ArchWiki
But @ManjaroDevOps’s suggestion is better on the long run. Unless that drive is an external one that you may use between several systems, in which case exFAT is preferable.
Brilliant, I’ve formatted the drive. Thanks for the quick replies guys!
I’ve quite naively, just wiped the entire drive:
lsblk ✔ 14m 29s
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
loop0 7:0 0 55.5M 1 loop /var/lib/snapd/snap/core18/2344
loop1 7:1 0 164.8M 1 loop /var/lib/snapd/snap/gnome-3-28-1804/161
loop2 7:2 0 4K 1 loop /var/lib/snapd/snap/bare/5
loop3 7:3 0 43.6M 1 loop /var/lib/snapd/snap/snapd/15177
loop4 7:4 0 65.2M 1 loop /var/lib/snapd/snap/gtk-common-themes/1519
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
nvme0n1 259:0 0 476.9G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 300M 0 part /boot/efi
└─nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 476.6G 0 part /
Unsure on what the correct procedure is for adding a new ext4 partition.
i tried the command:
sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sda2
which resulted in:
lsblk -f ✔ 7s
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0
squash 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/core18/2344
loop1
squash 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/gnome-3-28-1804/161
loop2
squash 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/bare/5
loop3
squash 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/snapd/15177
loop4
squash 4.0 0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/gtk-common-themes/1519
sda ext4 1.0 0dec10e4-6551-4953-9156-60259dc361d2 869.2G 0% /run/media/avarma/0dec10e4-6551-4953-9156-60259dc361d2
nvme0n1
│
├─nvme0n1p1
│ vfat FAT32 NO_LABEL
│ 4C2C-7676 299.1M 0% /boot/efi
└─nvme0n1p2
ext4 1.0 a37a148e-063a-48e6-9333-8ed75d826eaf 403.1G 9% /
Where i have no permissions on /dev/sda
What am i doing wrong?
If you wish you can just use gparted it’s a lot more simple or if your on KDE you can use KDE partition manager.
You created a new (empty) filesystem on /dev/sda2
… so far, so good …
What is the problem with it?
… it definitely is empty - because it is new / fresh
you just created it …
The new partition is mounted to a different folder, which thus uses the default permissions. See: [HowTo] Use multiple partitions / drives in your Manjaro installation
An issue i have with your output is that the “partition” seems configured on the drive – see the missing digit at the end of the name. 
If you can’t manage in the terminal, there are graphical tools available as @straycat suggested. See here for a long read: Partitioning - ArchWiki
Ah yes. I see the problem I fat fingered the command. The fix was as you stated I just needed to chmod the new partition so owner and group could actually edit! Thanks for all the terminal help 