installed win 10 on sata HDD then Ubuntu 14.04 on SSD drive. no problems until following a power cut windows threw half its file system out. Left ubuntu on SSD and did a clean install of windows10. used boot repair to reset grub. both systems boot up ok but with the S & M options and error message disk drive not ready. may be used by another process.
Checked the drives/partitions in "disks". there is a partition with 525mb free space immediately preceding the windows primary (C) partition and I think this is the problem.I mounted the windows partition SDB2 but will not permit rw. There are 2 options to boot windows in the grub menu and both will boot into windows but both ro only. Should I extend the windows partition to the start of the drive partition using the 525mb free space using gparted then update grub, unmount sdb2 and remount as rw. Would this solve the problem please.

Fstab -l sk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6a39b47c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 1026047 512000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 1026048 176807935 87890944 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 176809982 231495679 27342849 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 176809984 196339711 9764864 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 196341760 231495679 17576960 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3767dd0a

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb2 * 1026048 308226047 153600000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT


~$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb2
[sudo] password for margaret:

Disk /dev/sdb2: 157.3 GB, 157286400000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19122 cylinders, total 307200000 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x73736572

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb2p1 1920221984 3736432267 908105142 72 Unknown
/dev/sdb2p2 ? 1936028192 3889681299 976826554 6c Unknown
/dev/sdb2p3 ? 0 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sdb2p4 27722122 27722568 223+ 0 Empty
Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Thanks

Yeah, bloody Windows does that.

Well, if you can work it out by mounting the Windows partition manually rw, try this as root:

mount -t ntfs -o uid=YOUR_UID,gid=YOUR_GID,rw /dev/sdb2 /mnt/MOUNTPOINT

You should run the command as root and replace the uid/gid by your values so that you can use the mounted filesystem as an ordinary user. If you have some doubts or a problem with the command, you can check out the man pages for mount.

mount -t ntfs -o uid=1000_UID,gid=1000_GID,rw /dev/sdb2 /mnt/MOUNTPOINT -tt

Thanks aragon
but output is: mount point /mnt/MOUNTPOINT does not exist

I input the above code Is this correct please

[B]output of sfdisk -l -uM

Device Boot Start End MiB #blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 500 500 512000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 501 86331 85831 87890944 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 86332+ 113034 26703- 27342849 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda5 86333 95868 9536 9764864 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 95870 113034 17165 17576960 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 60801 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = mebibytes of 1048576 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End MiB #blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 501 150500 150000 153600000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sdb3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sdb4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty

Thanks for your help

You could try:

or

just to see if they exist in visible form.



Fred.

Hi,

It tells you /mnt/MOUNTPOINT does not exist because, if you check, you'll see there is no directory MOUNTPOINT inside /mnt. Initially, I thought you would replace MOUNTPOINT by some directory you created in /mnt for this purpose. Sorry I wasn't clear about that before.

I see you used 1000 for uid in the command. Let me clarify one more point. You should have replaced the whole "YOUR_UID" by 1000, e.g.

The first command creates that mount point in question and the second one mounts sdb2 at the mount point.

From the additional information you posted, it seems that sdb2 is empty. Try replacing sdb2 in the command by sdb1 or sda1.

Yes, oops. Missed a few CAPITALS there. Consistency when denoting input would be handy in general.

Also what makes a mount point, you are still within mnt, why make a new directory?

Fred.

So that you can have more than one guest partition mounted at the same time. I have four systems on my desktop machine, and I have, in each system, three mount points under /mnt for the other three, in case I need to do some editing from outside.

What makes a mount point? Nothing! A mount point is simply a directory, preferably an empty one. It becomes a mount point when you mount something on it. It doesn't have to come under /mnt. That's just a convention. In fact a lot of distros prefer to mount exchangeable disks under /media.

hazel,

so there is a special significance for designated mount points?

Fred.

Nope! It's pure convention.

hi Hazel Thanks for your reply. Yep joined that club a few years ago. yes I will be coming back to this as soon as I can. Just now im struggling with a corrupted sources list on my other pc running ubuntu 16.04. never had much problems with out of the box HW on any distro before but 16.04 has been a nightmare. However it is a brilliant learning curve. Convention has never been my strong point lol
thanks again

I think ntfs write has to be selected in the kernel config. You can check with:

$ grep -i ntfs /boot/config-$(uname -r)

Hi all Sorry this has taken so long. Dont want to bore you by rehashing what has previously been said. Tried your advice but still could not get sdb2 to mount in rw. Thats assuming that I followed your advice correctly Hmmm Finally I plucked up the courage to try to merge the unallocated space to the ntfs partition. Did this and then used Boot Repair. Result windows now boots in rw BUT !!! Just a small problem.

Before merging the unallocated partition windows would only mount in ro mode and the grub menu was:

Ubuntu
sda1 windows 10 bootloader all booted up fine but as I said windows in ro mode After merging the unallocated partition with ntfs - grub menu
sdb2Windows 10 bootloader


Ubuntu Boots fine except see below
sda1 windows 10 bootloader sda1 boots into windows repair screen missing file /windows/system32/winload
sdb1windows 10 bootloader Boots in windows ro rw x fine

Boot repair changed sdb2 to sdb1 and removed the boot loader from sda1 The little problem is that grub still looks for the windows boot files in sda1 and brings up an S to skip and M for manual repair. Click S and I can boot straight into ubuntu. The message on the S & M screen is busy or not ready
Is there a way to remove sda1 or tell grub it doesnt need to boot that partition anymore. This would stop the S & M screen appearing. If not no problem I can live with it

Sorry AM did not get back to you on your last post. The info here is for the current position ie after merging the unallocated space.


CONFIG_NTFS_FS=m
# CONFIG_NTFS_DEBUG is not set
# CONFIG_NTFS_RW is not set
Dont know if this is any help. It does not make sense to me because I can access windows in RW

Many thanks again for your help