Unable to edit file in second drive

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)
?

  1. Windows dual boot?
  2. 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
  1. Not a Windows dual boot. I have Installed Manjaro on the windows drive.
  2. yes the partition is NTFS.

So unfortunately I can’t go into windows to disable Fast startup :frowning:

  1. 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
  1. 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

1 Like

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 @linux-aarhus’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.

1 Like

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.

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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. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
If you can’t manage in the terminal, there are graphical tools available as @straycat suggested. See here for a long read: Partitioning - ArchWiki

1 Like

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 :smiley:

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