Unable to access Windows Drives!!
 

hi guys,,

i am unable to access my windows NTFS drives in Linux...
this is a really new problem for me.. as earlier i was able to access those drives

i have 2 hard disks..
hda - windows
hdd - linux

$mount
doesn't show the windows drives mounted

i have all the necessary folders created in /mnt

$mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c shows:
device already mounted or busy..

wat could be the problem...??

plz help!!

Can you show us your /etc/fstab please ? Have you created any other partitions on the drive to change your partition table ? What distro are you using ?

David

/etc/fstab contents!

/dev/hdd1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hdd6 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdd8 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=utf8,sync 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs umask=0,nls=utf8,ro 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d ntfs umask=0,nls=utf8,ro 0 0
/dev/hda6 /mnt/win_e ntfs umask=0,nls=utf8,ro 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdd7 /usr ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdd5 swap swap defaults 0 0

mount -l contents

/dev/hdd1 on / type ext3 (rw) []
none on /proc type proc (rw)
/dev/hdd6 on /boot type ext3 (rw) []
/dev/hdd8 on /home type ext3 (rw) []
none on /mnt/floppy type supermount (rw,sync,dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--)
/dev/hdd7 on /usr type ext3 (rw) []
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)

fdisk -l contents

Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 2550 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 2551 14593 96735397+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 2551 8542 48130708+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6 8543 14593 48604626 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hdd: 20.5 GB, 20525137920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2495 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdd1 * 1 655 5261256 83 Linux
/dev/hdd2 656 2495 14779800 5 Extended
/dev/hdd5 656 721 530113+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdd6 722 734 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hdd7 735 1779 8393931 83 Linux
/dev/hdd8 1780 2495 5751238+ 83 Linux

Have you installed the ntfs-3g package which provides for reading of NTFS partitions?
http://www.linux-ntfs.org/content/view/120/59/

I repeat, WHAT is your DISTRO ?

Ahhh you gave us fdisk -l already.....sorry....

Ok.... try this.... add user,auto to these entry's in /etc/fstab, then reboot.

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs umask=0,nls=utf8,ro,user,auto 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d ntfs umask=0,nls=utf8,ro,user,auto 0 0
/dev/hda6 /mnt/win_e ntfs umask=0,nls=utf8,ro,user,auto 0 0

Have you tried mounting them with the mount command ? And knowing which distro this is might help too....

Good luck....

David

Wow sad to see it takes a project to re-implement something thats in the base kernel :(


Does user,auto only work with the ro flag. My drives are in read write mode and user,auto has no effect as only root is allowed to access the drives.

I just tested it and it doesn't work for my ntfs partition, but it does work on my vfat partiton. Hmmm. Is it a ntfs sort of issue ? I'll be looking into it a little more.

I see the original poster uses mandriva. Mandriva used to include a ntfs driver that allowed you to browse your ntfs partitons, but I think they discontinued it, as it sometimes screwed up your data, if I remember correctly. Have you switched distro's or upgraded your mandriva install ?

Sorry I can be of more help right now, I'll look into it more though....

Be back soon...

David

I tried it as well with ro and still ntfs was only able to be accessed as root and not normal users. Sorry if I hijacked this thread.

NTFS-3G is not a reimplementation of the kernel driver but a huge improvement on it to make stable read/write NTFS a reality. The same guys are working on the driver for 5-8 years.

Fedora NTFS
 

I was referring to redhat/fedora because they disable NTFS support in the kernel due to legal issues.

From what I can gather as well this project seams geared toward only those distros and not linux in general. From that I figured it only exists to solve the issue with ntfs being disabled in the kernel by the fedora/redhat folks. ntfs for a long time was not reliable and was marked dangerous in the kernel so there are many out there that still think this is the case.

I also found out how to get a normal user to be able to access a ntfs parttion as well. You have to mount it with special UID flags.

What would really be nice is to have a ext3 driver for windows that was actually reliable and stable. All of the drivers that I have tried cause issues or are not fully implemented. Its all very mute for me tho as I plan on removing windows from that laptop soon as I can get wine working properly on it.

one of my buddy is also experiencing this problem with RHEL 4, kernel 2.6
i think this problem is within the fedora & redhat kernels..!!

i am having this prob. in Mandriva 2007.
Actually i was having a fine dual boot system .. but something went wrong with the dreaded win xp & i had to re-install it & then the GRUB into MBR..

but now i am not able to access the NTFS partitions..
Can compiling the kernel help??

Crash

Have you tried un-mounting first, then try mounting:

Everything you showed appears to be fine, even after re-building Windows, if the position/size of the partitions have changed, it should be taken care of by un-mounting and re-mounting.
From a fresh install, Mandriva 2007 has no problems reading an NTFS partition, I used to have a shared 100GB FAT32 partition for data that was accessible by all my OS's on my multi-boot systems. But since ntfs-3g is above version 1.0, I converted the data partition to NTFS and got rid of my shared Linux /home partition because now I have un-limited file size with NTFS.
The only distribution I have that supplied ntfs-3g above version 1.0 is Debian Etch (& Fedora), so Etch is the only one I installed fuse, fuse libs, and ntfs-3g from it's repositories. Using Fedora's packages screwed up everything because of a problem with SELinux, even when disabling SELinux, it could not resume swap, so I had no swap.
For Fedora 6, Mandriva 2007, and Mandrake 10.2, I installed ntfs-3g and Fuse from source from the link below. All my Linux distributions including Mandriva 2007 32bit on my laptop read & write to the NTFS data partitions without problems. You just have to make sure to use a version above 1.0, and stay away from Fedora's packages. I gained some HDD real estate getting rid of /home, and allot less problems with corrupt user settings. Even after upgrading Mandriva's kernel I did'nt have to re-build Fuse or ntfs-3g, they still worked. Same with Fedora.

http://www.ntfs-3g.org/

If you want to try ntfs-3g (from source), make sure to have kernel-source or headers and set up fstab exactly as they say in the instructions. They are easy to set up and "fabulous". There is a link to Fuse site on ntfs-3g site.

If you use ntfs-3g from your distribution's repositories, you will have to seek instructions on how to set up /etc/fstab as it may be different.

Just a side note with ntfs-3g and Mandriva.

Mandriva & PC Linux use compressed kernel modules, delete the Fuse.ko.gz in /lib/modules/uname -r/kernel/fs/fuse directory. During the first step in installing fuse from source is ./configure, use this command to make sure to get the latest fuse as it is present in the kernel but not recommended to use the old kernel version (kernel 2.6.20 and up have the right one, like Fedora). You still need to install Fuse from source with kernels above 2.6.20, just don't need to add "--enable-kernel-module" in the configure step.

thanks for suggestions buddy.. i'll try this out & let you know what happens