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I have a dual boot machine, booting both Windows 10 and Ubuntu. Ubuntu 16.04 works fine, but each time after I boot Windows 10, Ubuntu 18.04 has a corrupted superblock, or so it says. The only way to solve this is to boot into Ubuntu 16.04 and correct it with the new e2fsck. I have installed Ubuntu 18.04 on two different partitions, but both get corrupted by Windows 10. The Computer is an Asus laptop with UEFI and a GPT hard disk. If you need more specific information to solve this, please let me know.

Currently Ubuntu 18.04 is hardly usable as the partition has to be corrected each time after I use Windows 10, which happens at least once a day.

Eliah Kagan
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Dirk Heitman
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    Have you installed a driver in Windows that allows you to access ext4 partitions? If so, that's probably your problem. Uninstall it asap. – heynnema Mar 28 '18 at 15:14
  • You were absolutely right, I did install ext2fsd some years ago. It never gave problems, so I forgot about it. Removing it, repairing the 18.04 partitions using the new e2fsck fixed it. The corruption does not happen anymore. Only a few grub2 problems with gpt partitions remain. They also were there in the beginning of 16.04, but went away at some point. Just inconveniences which I should be able to fix. Thanks a lot for the advice. – Dirk Heitman Mar 29 '18 at 13:46
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    I'm voting to reopen this. Its closure was not clearly wrong, as it's asking about a stability problem seeming to arise in 18.04. But it turns out this was not a problem specific to a development version of Ubuntu. See the comments above confirming the cause, as well as heynnema's answer. Arguably the problem arose as a result of a bug in the Windows driver being used to access Ubuntu's filesystem, but that's not likely to be reportable on Launchpad, and the goal of this question was to identify and fix the problem, not to keep using that driver. – Eliah Kagan Mar 31 '18 at 20:44
  • @EliahKagan I was about to VTC as 18.04 off-topic. Then I read your comment. Could one of the stakeholders here edit the question and take out all the 18.04 references so someone else doesn't VTC as 18.04 off-topic? – WinEunuuchs2Unix Apr 01 '18 at 18:34
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    @WinEunuuchs2Unix. Sorry to say but the 18.04 reference is relevant, as 18.04 seems to use a new ext4 partition (feature). This causes the ext2fsd driver to misbehave. I agree the problem is not in Ubuntu 18.04, but it is the (only) victim so far. Other users may look here also for the solution. heynnema, thanks again for the quick and accurate answer. Maybe you can add that the fsck in grub will spit out an enormous amount of errors. I gave up after watching the screen for 5 minutes showing errors and switched to 16.04 to fix it. – Dirk Heitman Apr 02 '18 at 07:47
  • If you can live with read-only access, I would recommend the DiskInternals "Linux Reader". It is read-only access, so it does not corrupt any files, but still allows me to read/copy Linux partitions. – John Anderson Jun 23 '18 at 13:22

1 Answers1

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In a dual boot configuration with Windows and Ubuntu, Ubuntu can easily read Windows NTFS partitions/disks, however, when booted into Windows, Windows can't natively read/mount Ubuntu ext[2-4] partitions/disks.

Many users try to remedy this by installing a Windows driver (like ext2fsd) that will allow them to read/mount ext[2-4] partitions.

My experience is that these Windows drivers can regularly corrupt the Ubuntu ext[2-4] partitions. Uninstall this driver in Windows, and fsck your Ubuntu partition, and you should be fine.

To check the file system on your Ubuntu partition...

  • boot to the GRUB menu
  • choose Advanced Options
  • choose Recovery mode
  • choose Root access
  • at the # prompt, type sudo fsck -f /
  • repeat the fsck command if there were errors
  • type reboot

If for some reason you can't do the above...

  • boot to a Ubuntu Live DVD/USB
  • start gparted and determine which /dev/sdaX is your Ubuntu EXT4 partition
  • quit gparted
  • open a terminal window
  • type sudo fsck -f /dev/sdaX # replacing X with the number you found earlier
  • repeat the fsck command if there were errors
  • type reboot
heynnema
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  • Microsoft even agrees with you: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2016/11/17/do-not-change-linux-files-using-windows-apps-and-tools/ – K7AAY Jul 11 '18 at 17:36