Desktop Environment (if applicable): Standard Ubuntu?
Problem Description: I went to open one of the storage drives in my PC and I got a message that I do not have permission. It was working fine before… but last I opened it was a couple of months ago and I believe I have updated’/upgraded since then (possible red herring. Though I did that while resolving an issue with the desktop environment failing to load. Maybe I broke something else… I will check the logs of the last modified date to see if I can find anything while waiting for help.)
Relevant System Information:
Is any of it relevant?
What I’ve Tried:
Anyway, I tried a couple of the solutions on stack exchange Sudo chmod, Sudo chown, nautilus.
“sudo chown $USER: /mnt/HDD”
The chown solution sort of worked the first time (said “read only” in the terminal), the folders displayed, but it immediately timed out. None of the ch variations I tried seemed to work after.
Nautilus… The instructions did not seem to reflect what I could access, and I could not complete the solution.
I also installed “ntfs-config ntfs-3g” and tried to do ntfsfix but that didn’t seem to accept the command recommended, and could not complete the solution.
I feel like this has happened before for some reason, but I am pretty sure I did something else to resolve it, possibly in the grub screen?
Have you accessed the NTFS partition from Windows?
When Windows shuts down, it doesn’t do a clean shut-down as other OSes do. It does a sort-of hibernation, which leaves the NTFS system in a so-called “dirty” state.
If that’s the case, or if it’s a USB device that wasn’t cleanly unmounted the last time you used it, this could cause the problem.
The correct way to solve this (if I’m correct — it could be something else) is to remount the partition in Windows, and let Windows cleanly unmount it.
If it’s a Windows partition (i.e. Windows is installed on it), you need to shut Windows down cleanly, preventing it from doing its sort-of hibernation. To achieve this, disable Windows hibernation and fast-boot. I don’t recall how to do this, but there’s plenty of information on the internet.
Although you can clean the NTFS partition using Linux tools, it’s usually discouraged because it’s not as reliable as Windows’s own tools.
The problem you are seeing is probably the result of what is mentioned in post 2 above or the possibility that you have bitlocker on in your windows install. Do you have windows, you don’t mention it but clearly the problem partition is ntfs. ntfsfix is not going to resolve this type problem as that software basically tells windows to run chkdsk on next boot. It is very limited.
The Arch Linux site has an explanation of what ntfs-3g does which might be worth reading.
The way I see it, you have mounted that partition manually, perhaps by some entry in /etc/fstab, because the mount point is /mnt. Without further action or options, it will be owned by root. IIRC, there was a procedure to map your user as the owner, but I can’t quite remember how that worked. It might not be necessary anymore, though, because you can just have the auto-mounter (UDisks2) mount it in your user’s name.
For that, the drive needs to be unmounted first; I also think any reference in /etc/fstab also needs to be removed or commented out – don’t forget systemctl daemon-reload after changing fstab. Then log out and back in, or just reboot. The drive should appear in the file manager as “removable” disk; just click it and it’s mounted somewhere in /media/<user name>/, possibly as that 8C0A... name. If you want a better name, just label it (use Windows for that) and the label should then be picked as the name of the ephemeral /media mount point.
gnome-disk-utility defaults to /mnt when setting a mountpoint via the GUI.
It does not differentiate between FAT32, ext4, ntfs etc.
Of course, the default can be overridden by the user, if /mnt is an undesirable mountpoint.
I’d also suggest running a full chkdsk in a Microsoft OS on the NTFS. If the file system is USB based then do remember to use the safe remove feature before physically unplugging
But that is just a frontend for /etc/fstab, IIUC. One probably ends up with default mount options, which means, root is the owner. UDisks2 is all one needs for temporary mounts and should take care of permissions. I don’t have an NTFS to play around with, so I cannot test any of this.
/mnt is meant for temporary mounts of the administrator and, if one uses it, one should create sub-directories for the individual mount points, otherwise there can only be a single mounted filesystem at a time. At least, that’s how I do it; and the Ubuntu installer does to, for it mounts the target filesystem in /mnt/target, IIRC.
If all you want is to access files on an NTFS, use UDisks2. If you want to make it permanent, take a peek at the output of mount to see the options used and transfer them to /etc/fstab; do change the mount point, however, because /media is “owned” by UDisks2.
I do not have a windows partition. I should remove the drive, insert it into an external drive housing and plug it into a windows PC to correct it?
I will try to troubleshoot through the other solutions as I have time (sorry for the slow responses I have been working into the AM the past few days.)
That’s possible, or if you removed it before waiting for it to safely synchronise.
When you want to remove a drive, go to Disks (gnome-disks). Select the drive. There’s a “power button” at the top right of Disks. Press it. Wait for it to confirm before you remove the drive. It’s roughly the equivalent of Windows “Safely Remove”, but it also powers down the device.
Although you can use Linux NTFS tools to check the device, it’s generally not advised because people aren’t sure of its reliability yet.
No, you don’t need to put it into an external enclosure. It will just appear as a “removable” device, if it is not already mounted by other means. Such partitions show up in the file manager and the dock; just click them and UDisks2 mounts them at an appropriate location in /media/<your user name>/<device name>. Since that is a user service, the permissions should be set so you have read/write access. If that isn’t the case, you may need to map the Windows user id to your Linux user; I vaguely remember a procedure to do that, but not much more than that, sorry. I can dig deeper into mine an the internet’s memory, perhaps, but you should see if just using the the file manager approach does the trick.
As for the label, I think it should be safe to use GNOME Disks to set a partition label for that one, because it doesn’t touch the NTFS filesystem at all; it’s at the partition table level where such labels are set.
