Can't copy NTFS files

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1

Computer 1, Copy Operation 1:

Two internal ssd drives. Drive 0 is 250 GB ext4 with ubuntu 24.04 OS, drive 1 is 400 GB NTFS with Windows 11 24H2.

I attempted to copy an approximately 40 GB Windows user file directory from drive 1 to drive 0.

During copy operation, the computer display abruptly froze without any preceding abnormal indication, computer will not respond to any keyboard or mouse input, including ALT/SYSREQ/REISUB. After over four hours, computer was still non-responsive.

Computer 1, Copy Operation 2:

I attempted to copy an approx. 8 GB Windows App Data file directory from drive 1 to drive 0.

Same result as Copy Operation 1. During copy operation, the computer display abruptly froze without any preceding abnormal indication, computer will not respond to any keyboard or mouse input, including ALT/SYSREQ/REISUB. After over four hours, computer was still non-responsive.

Computer 2 Copy Operation 1:

One internal 250 GB HDD EXT4 with ubuntu 24.04, one 128 GB removable USB drive NTFS.

I attempted to copy a 40 GB Windows user file directory from the NTFS USB drive to the EXT4 internal HDD.

During copy operation, the computer display abruptly froze without any preceding abnormal indication, computer will not respond to any keyboard or mouse input, including ALT/SYSREQ/REISUB. After over ten hours, computer was still non-responsive.

Computer 2, Copy Operation 2:

I attempted to copy a 40 GB file directory containing misc iso’s from an EXT4 formatted 128 GB USB drive to the EXT4 internal HDD.

The copy operation completed without any error in about 15 minutes.

I used the Copy and the Copy-to commands from within Gnome, and I have even tried copy and rsync commands from a command line too. I have repeated these tests several times, and the results are consistent. The only variation is the amount of time before the computer freezes. The computer only freezes during copy operations between EXT4 files and NTFS files.

Surely I can’t be the only one experiencing these problems trying to copy NTFS files. Is there any way to tell if a bug report has been submitted on this?

I really do need to get these files from that NTFS drive onto my linux system.
Are there any practical workarounds?

2

bvst -
Just a thought but,
the package ntfs-3g is installed ? Though now-a-days I do think is installed by default

dpkg -l ntfs-3g

Info:

apt show ntfs-3g

-slim maybe-

3

Yep. It’s installed.

I should have mentioned that the copy operations do proceed… up until they don’t.
I don’t think the NTFS copy operations would do anything without that.

4

Try copying in small chunks. I think with a big chunk of files to copy, and less amount of ram, this is very much bound to happen.

5

Have you looked at your system logs (e.g. journalctl, dmesg) to see if there were any messages there? Is it a SMART drive? Can you look at the measurements, benchmark tests?

I have an old (2012) external 6T hub drive formatted with ntfs that takes transfers quite well (though, I have it backed up). I routinely use it for backups (that then get duplicated). 40-80G are well within it’s capability. I even used fsarchiver (-x) to back it up and I don’t have any issues.

So, I think there’s something “special” about your drive (unfortunately), hopefully just software or configuration.

6

I have tried smaller chunks… down to about a gigabyte. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they freeze. It is possible that smaller sizes yet might improve my success rate, but every time the computer freezes, I am forced to do a hard reset and risk corrupting a drive.

7

I have looked at journalctl, but I really cannot make any sense out of it. I am sure system logs might be of help to someone more linux competent than I am.

I have to doubt that there is anything “special” about my drive, since I have experienced the same results with two different desktop computers and multiple drive types… nvme, ssd, hdd, usb.

8

I think soumyadghosh means the read/write buffer size, not the total transfer.

You might try looking into ddrescue which is also part of SystemRescue (I highly recommend this distro). ddrescue isn’t trivial but, it might be able to salvage the data on the drive if the drive is dying.

p.s. (by “special” I meant that it could be sick)

sudo journalctl --since yesterday -p err

9

What would lead you to suspect a faulty drive? If this problem only manifested itself on a single drive, I would certainly doubt the integrity of the drive, but I have documented this problem on two separate computers and five separate drives. I’m thinking that would have to be an extreme circumstance that all of these components are identically unable to handle only NTFS files.

10

ok.

Questions:

  • Have these drives ever worked properly with linux?
  • How/when did you format them? e.g. under which OS, with what software.
  • Does the stick work ok on the Windows system? e.g. 40G copies: stick to/from Windows 400G drive under Windows?

I guess I assumed they only recently started acting up. i.e. they were formatted some time ago and had been working and then stopped working recently.

You didn’t describe any OS changes or anything else, you just described problems with NTFS under OS 24.04…

I have a Windows 11 system and a spare stick hanging around. I could go and format it and play with it on both Noble and Oracular (Plucky also, but, it looks you’re using Noble). I don’t believe there’s going to be an issue - though I vaguely recall something about recent NTFS changes in Windows (I assume this isn’t the issue however).

In your first post, I see two NTFS drives described: the 400G internal (with Windows 11 on it) and a 128G stick?

11

My Bad for not making it clear that this was a new install of linux. My apologies.

Have these drives ever worked properly with linux?
No, simply because prior to a couple of months ago, I have never installed linux on either of these computers before.

How/when did you format them? e.g. under which OS, with what software?
Computer 1 has two internal drives. Drive 0 is a 250 GB nvme, formatted to ext4 when I installed ubuntu 24.04 on it about a month ago. (It was previously formatted to NTFS and used only as a data storage drive with Windows.) Drive 1 is a 400 GB ssd, formatted to NTFS several years ago, when I installed Windows 7. Windows 11 24H2 is currently installed on it. I installed ubuntu on drive 0 with a dual boot system with EFI partitions on both drives.

Computer 2 has one internal 250 GB hdd drive formatted to EXT4 with ubuntu 24.04 installed about two months ago. (Previously NTFS with Windows 10.)

Does the stick work ok on the Windows system? e.g. 40G copies: stick to/from Windows 400G drive under Windows?
Yes. Prior to the installation of ubuntu on these computers, all drives I have, internal or external, were formatted in either NTFS or some version of FAT. I have never had any trouble transferring or copying files between any of these drives, using Windows.

This problem with NTFS files only came up when I tried to get at all my data on the Windows drive from within linux. (documents, pictures, videos, music, app profiles, etc.) When that did not work because of the freeze-ups, I copied my Windows user files to a couple of USB sticks, (formatted in NTFS because Windows doesn’t do EXT4 files.) The same freeze-ups occur when I try to copy the files from these NTFS USB sticks onto either computer.

12

They actually would, with the kernel of 24.04 the system defaults to use the driver from the kernel instead of ntfs-3g if it is not installed…

For a test I’d try to temporarily remove ntfs-3g, reboot and let the system use the kernel driver instead (if it doesn’t work you can at any time re-install ntfs-3g)

1 Like
13

Nice try, :+1: but no joy.
I uninstalled the apt package, and tried to copy the folder from an NTFS USB disk to the computer hard drive. After copying about half the folder, it hung up and is currently non-responsive.

14

“either” do you mean the stuff you copied from the Windows 400G to the NTFS sticks can not be copied back to the Windows disk while running Windows? I want to clarify this point before making further suggestions.

I did do a test of a USB stick. I used Windows 11 to format it as NTFS, I put a 40G file on it and was able to read it in under Noble and write back to the stick as well. No issues with performance or otherwise.

15

Using Windows, I have in the past routinely copied folders and files of all sizes from the 400 GB NTFS disk to numerous NTFS USB disks, and vice-versa. I’m not using the Windows partition too much lately, but I have no reason to think anything has changed in this respect.

Let me make it clear.
File copy operations using Windows and involving drives formatted in its native NTFS and FAT file systems are not a problem at all.
File copy operations using linux and involving drives fomatted in its native EXT4 file system are not a problem either.
File copy operations using linux and involving drives formatted in the NTFS file system are where the problem lies.

16

After suggesting doing the copy while using a live distro (vs the installed system) and an strace of cp, I haven’t been able to diagnose the problem. Some of the info is not quite clear, but, regardless, I am out of ideas. So, I defer. Good luck bvst. I hope someone else can help…

1 Like
17

Many thanks for your efforts.

18

I tried to copy my 40 GB Windows user file to the linux desktop from an NTFS formatted USB drive on computer 2 a few more times today. As before, the operation always ended up with a frozen, totally non-responsive computer.

Out of desperation, I installed Linux Mint. With Linux Mint, the identical copy operation I just described completed without any errors or freeze-ups… several times now.

These freeze-ups are not a hardware problem.

I really prefer ubuntu, but it’s not very useful to me without some means of reliably copying files to and from NTFS drives.

I will make every effort to provide information on the problem. Can no one offer me any assistance?

19

What version of Linux Mint is working correctly for you?
What version of Ubuntu is it based on (here is how to find out)?
What kernel version are you using in the working Linux Mint (run uname -r in terminal to find out)?
What kernel version are you using in the non-working Ubuntu 24.04?

20

What version of Linux Mint is working correctly for you?
22.0

What version of Ubuntu is it based on?
ubuntu 24.04 noble numbat

What kernel version are you using in the working Linux Mint?
6.8.0-51-generic

What kernel version are you using in the non-working Ubuntu 24.04?
6.11.0-19-generic