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I have over a dozen 4TB HDDs that were all formatted as:

  • NTFS via Windows 2012
  • 64KB cluster size
  • GPT (not MBR)
  • Single Primary partition
  • Is not a Dynamic drive

This caused problems mounting under Linux as the old ntfs driver didn't support anything beyond 4KB clusters. After reading up on ntfs-3g, they have added up to 64KB clusters a few years back - and I have a version much newer than the one that added that support.

My problem is lsblk, nor any other utility, nor the OS itself sees

/dev/sda1

Instead, everything sees:

/dev/sda

But, fdisks sees /dev/sda1?!?:

$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 976754646 sectors
Disk model: 724040ALE640    
Units: sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x6561f197

Device     Boot Start        End    Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1           1 4294967295 4294967295  16T ee GPT

Some additional commands...

$ lsblk 
NAME            MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
...
sda               8:0    0   3.6T  0 disk  
nvme1n1         259:0    0 238.5G  0 disk  
├─nvme1n1p1     259:1    0   498M  0 part  /boot/efi
├─nvme1n1p2     259:2    0     4G  0 part  /recovery
├─nvme1n1p3     259:3    0   230G  0 part  
│ └─cryptdata   253:0    0   230G  0 crypt 
│   └─data-root 253:1    0   230G  0 lvm   /
└─nvme1n1p4     259:4    0     4G  0 part  
  └─cryptswap   253:2    0     4G  0 crypt [SWAP]

$ sudo ntfs-3g.probe -r /dev/sda
NTFS signature is missing.


$ sudo ntfs-3g.probe -r /dev/sda1
Failed to access '/dev/sda1': No such file or directory
Error opening '/dev/sda1': No such file or directory


$ ls -la /dev/sda*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 May 29 21:06 /dev/sda

Why does fdisk see /dev/sda1, but nothing else does?

And yes, the disks work fine under Windows Server 2012 R2. I even loaded up a Windows 10 VirtualBox on Ubuntu 20.10, passed the raw disk /dev/sda to the VM, and Windows 10 saw it immediately and i could browse and edit the disk.

Configuration:

  • Ubuntu 20.10
  • ntfs-3g 2017.3.23AR.3
eduncan911
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    Is the partition on sda a dynamic partition from Windows? If it is, Ubuntu doesn't know how to handle that, especially since fdisk shows the drive as 4TB, but it is showing the partition as 16TB. I don't think you would want Ubuntu to mount that as it could cause file corruption. – Terrance May 30 '21 at 02:22
  • You show this: and it should be gpt: Disklabel type: dos And your gpt protective MBR does show gpt. What does this show: sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda You may need gpt repairs. If backup gpt partition is valid it will correct drive. But you still are not showing any NTFS partitions. If you used MBR, you converted drive to 2TB as that is the max that MBR supports.repair gpt: http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/repairing.html & http://askubuntu.com/questions/386752/fixing-corrupt-backup-gpt-table/386802#386802 – oldfred May 30 '21 at 02:31
  • @terrance these are 4TB disks. Why it shows 16TB partition, I do not know. I don't think I formatted them as dynamic; however, that was 10 years ago. I'll pass the block device back into a windows VM and will look again. – eduncan911 May 30 '21 at 13:18
  • @oldfred they are gpt. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to format them as 4TB. I agree, the fact it shows dos is quite odd. – eduncan911 May 30 '21 at 13:19
  • It could have been converted to Dynamic at some point. Just a note here to the whole MBR vs GPT and 2TB drives, I have a 3TB drive that is MBR/msdos and not GPT partitioned and it sees all 3TB without an issue I have not had an issue with this drive at all. Just saying that from my observation the 2TB limit is not correct. – Terrance May 30 '21 at 13:25
  • It is a MBR limit, but some created proprietary tools as a work around or use non-standard sector sizes. You should undo the dynamic if you want to use with Linux. https://askubuntu.com/questions/482768/changing-windows-dynamic-disk-partition-to-basic-partition-and-not-the-full-driv & http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man1/ldmtool.1.html – oldfred May 30 '21 at 14:36
  • @Terrance: Just passed the block device through to Windows. I can confirm, it is not a dynamic disk (it gives me the option to convert to Dynamic). It is also an GPT partition, not dos so no MBR here. I'm stumped. I guess at this point I'll just connect all the drives to the new linux box, setup a KVM windows vm and pass through all the disks. That would allow me to copy the data off to the newer drives, which is my overall objective anyways. – eduncan911 May 30 '21 at 18:15
  • Disklabel type: dos in your output shows that it is not originally configured in GPT but as MBR. Only the partition that was configured inside of it is GPT. My guess is there is some sort of corruption to the partition itself that is causing the issue. – Terrance May 30 '21 at 18:22

0 Answers0