Hi Ruth, Let me ask some questions to start with.
1) Do you still have access to these disks under Windows? 2) Do you intend to ever use the Windows systems again? (Dual booting). The reason for the first question is sometimes a Windows system does not close down in what we think is a normal manner and leaves the disks in a hibernation state where it writes data to a hiberfil.sys file. The typical way around this is to start in Windows and disable the FastStartup. It is not necessary to have to use Windows to fix this, but if you are going to dual boot, then it is best if you disable the Fast Startup feature Control Panel --> Power Options --> Choose what the power buttons do ->> Under the "Define power buttons and turn on Password Protection" there should be an option to "Change settings that are currently unavailable" At the bottom of that page you should now have a section saying "Shutdown Settings". Uncheck the "Turn on fast startup (recommended)" Save changes. Without using Windows we can check to see what condition the drives are in (all this is assuming you have the ntfs-3g and the fuseiso packages installed First let us identify which drives are NTFS on the system *sudo lsblk -o NAME,FSTYPE,SIZE,MOUNTPOINT* this should give you something like ... sdb sdb1 16M sdb2 ntfs 3.6T /fred This is showing me that the device sdb is the NTFS drive. Alternatively *sudo parted -l* Disk /dev/sdb 3.7TB ... number start End Size Filesystem 2 16M 3.6TB 3.6TB ntfs Alternatively the graphical tool gparted should show you what drive is an ntfs partition type. Let us make somewhere to mount the disk *mkdir -p /mywindowsd* Now we can try to mount it *sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb2 /mywindowsd* we should now be able to access the disk *ls /mywindowsd* If you get an error message such as wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb2 take a look at *sudo dmesg* this is to see if the disk has a Dirty flag set? sdb: sdb2 sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk ntfs3(sdb2): It is recommended to use chkdsk. ntfs3(sdb2): volume is dirty and "force" flag is not set! We can reset the dirty flag which the Windows system set with the Fast Startup *sudo ntfsfix -d /dev/sdb2* If it did mount, we can check how it mounted with *mount* looking down this list I find /dev/sdb2 on /mywindowsd type fuseblk (rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096) which is showing I have both read and write permissions. Let us assume you only have read (ro permissions) We can unmount with *sudo umount /mywindowsd* remount forcing read write with *sudo mount -o rw -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb2 /mywindowsd* Hopefully at that point you have access to your drives. It is a pain to do this every time you reboot your machine so you would then want to edit your /etc/fstab file to automount. To give you an idea, mine with an ntfs drive has the entry UUID=3AFCF8FBFCF8B26D /mywindowsd ntfs-3g defaults,nls=utf8,umask=0000,dmask=0022,fmask=0022,nofail,uid=1000,gid=1000,windows_names 0 2 The identifier UUID is found by running *sudo blkid* I quite like the https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fstab to explain the options of fstab and https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=406087 for ntfs specifically. There are some advantages to having the ntfs file system mounted. The main one being if you ever want to dual boot. In my case that is not an issue, but I have some encryption that is ntfs only for secure at rest drives. It can use EFS to encrypt individual files (with Linux we tend to lock the whole drive with LUKS or ecryptfs although we can use fsencrypt for individual files) The alternative is true that ext4, or XFS or JFS or ZFS or btrfs have advantages. If we widen it out, UFS under Solaris was replaced by ZFS. Aix has JFS but is now JFS2. HP-UX had VxFS and EVFS or the old UFS(HFS) but now AdvFS. It is all going to depend on your usage. I tend to use ext4 because I am familiar with the tools when things go wrong. That is not to say other file systems do not have tools, just that I have struggled with some. Regards John On Wed, 29 Oct 2025 at 13:43, Ruth Gunstone <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > Long-time 'lurker' here. > I've been on this mailing list for eons. Dabbled in Linux and currently > have a couple of elderly laptops running various distros (Kubuntu and > Mint Mate). Mostly a good experience - not least because it's saved a > few bits of kit from the recycler or landfill!! > > I also fiddle about with a Raspberry Pi (well, three!) running a mixture > of Linux and RISC OS (yes!!!) > > Anyway, since M$ got all stroppy and are forcing everyone off Win 10 > (and I got equally stroppy and said "f###-you M$"!), I've now started > transitioning my main office PC to Linux. I've gone with Linux Mint > (cinnamon) as I've used it on one of my laptops and it's solid and I can > find my way around most of what I need to do. > > So . . . > Main system disc (containing Windows 10 + apps) removed from PC. > New 1TB M.2 drive installed. Linux Mint installed. Pretty much without > incident :-) > > Here's where I'm stuck... > My PC has several additional hard-drives installed. Some are > partitioned. Windows 'saw' them as drives "D","E"... etc. > > Linux Mint is 'seeing' these drives/partitions (all NTFS), but > steadfastly refuses to let me do anything on them. This is very > unfortunate as ALL my work files, video projects, audio mixing projects > etc., etc. are stored there. Yes, I COULD copy the contents onto my 1TB > 'linux' drive, but that seems very wasteful. I'd much rather be able to > access the drives/files normally from Linux. I'm SURE I've done this > before, somehow, but can't remember! > > I've tried using things like "chown" to take ownership of the folders, > but "computer says no". "Read only filing system". > > Command-line stuff is really not my thing, and I end up swearing at the > screen and going to make tea. > > Any help/suggestions very welcome . . . > > Be kind :-) > > > TTFN! > Ruth > > > > > -- > Ruth Gunstone > Audio Visual Services > 07870 993379 > > > _______________________________________________ > Sheffield Linux User's Group > http://sheflug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/sheflug_sheflug.org.uk > FAQ at: http://www.sheflug.org.uk/mailfaq.html > > GNU - The Choice of a Complete Generation > _______________________________________________ Sheffield Linux User's Group http://sheflug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/sheflug_sheflug.org.uk FAQ at: http://www.sheflug.org.uk/mailfaq.html GNU - The Choice of a Complete Generation
