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I have a problem and hope you can help me. I have two hard drives mounted, which were originally created under Windows. Windows has been removed and Linux is the only operating system installed. The problem is, I can't write anything on these drives (the options to create files, folders etc. are greyed out).

I tried remounting them as read-write, which only worked until the point that the options to create files and folders were not greyed out anymore, but when clicking on an option, it gave me an error.

How can I fix this? I suppose it has something to do with the ownership of the drives, as they were created under Windows. Of course I already googled and searched in forums, but there were multiple solutions and I don't quite know if they suit my situation. I really don't want to mess anything up as there are quite important files on that drives and backing up ~7 TB of data is not that easy.

Thank you.

linuxnewbie
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  • But, you can mount the drives and see the contents? Important point to verify. – K7AAY Jan 27 '20 at 22:03
  • Welcome to AskUbuntu, the application like 'Disks' and 'Gparted' helps you to see clearly inside of them. Linux can read/write into NTFS but it is not safe to do perpetually, linux prefers an EXT format than NTFS. – Sadaharu Wakisaka Jan 28 '20 at 00:42
  • @K7AAY yes, I can mount the drives simply by clicking on the drive in the File Manager or by using "Disks". Also, my account is listed as "owner" in the drive properties. Reading e.g. playing music or copying from those drives are absolutely no problem. Just can't write on them. I once more tried remounting them as read write by the Terminal and tried copying files to them a couple of times. Some files can be copied, but most often I get an error "error splicing file input/output error" – linuxnewbie Jan 28 '20 at 19:59
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    @SadaharuWakisaka I already tried Disks and Gparted but were not able to find a solution. Do you really think the NTFS format could be using this issue? How could I fix this without formatting them to EXT4, as I don't have any space somewhere else to backup the files. I read something about "ntfsfix", should I try that? But the disk itself should be totally fine... – linuxnewbie Jan 28 '20 at 20:16
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    I ran the ntfsfix command on both drives and it worked! I have write access now. Thank you anyway for helping out. – linuxnewbie Jan 28 '20 at 20:42
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    Does this answer your question? Unable to mount Windows (NTFS) filesystem due to hibernation – K7AAY Jan 28 '20 at 21:43
  • @linuxnewbie, I had an external NTFS hard drive to store files shared with Windows OS, one day in several years ago, it had some inconsistent files on its catalog and only Windows OS could repair it. Today, things could be different but it could be a potential risk. So since then, I use an EXT4 format for a linux native disk and an NTFS for linux is a very temporal solution to use. Good work and good luck. – Sadaharu Wakisaka Jan 29 '20 at 00:58
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    Does this answer your question? Fix corrupt NTFS partition without Windows – karel Jan 29 '20 at 01:58

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