Can Mint read NTFS

[chrisbard]

Well I remember using my NTFS partition to upload some photos while using Mint and now when I try to use it it says it can't mount it as it's already mounted and when I try to open the content says it's unavailable. I am booting from a USB pendrive with mint on it, any ideea what went wrong?

[Daniel ~]

If you haven't installed to a hard drive I don't think you can save settings or files...But as I haven't yet accomplished this myself, I can't say for sure.

Hey Boo, your wanted on the phone!

[booman]

Yes it sure can.
I am dual booting as we speak: Winblows 7 and Mint 14
I go to Computer and it shows my other NTFS partitions
Now I havn't done this in a long with from live disk but it should work the same.

Are you using Winblows 7?
One time I remember trying this and Linux would not access the NTFS partitions. Something about permissions. I did some research and if you have Encryption or BitLocker enabled it may stop Linux from accessing the NTFS drives.

Also, if you are running Winblows 8, that is a whole other story. I have not done a lot of research but something in 8 will stop you from even booting to a live disk

[chrisbard]

Nope I used the same pendrive a while ago and it was working. Now with the same system, nothing changed on the system and cant read the main windows partition. The pendrive linux might have updated something on itself at some point :S

[booman]

oh, so it was working but now it isn't.
the only way a pen drive Linux can update is if you tell it to update.... and you have to leave "persistance" (extra space when setting up the USB drive) so it has room for the updates.
If you use persistance, you can actually install programs, updates, games and other stuff on the Live Disk....

I would suggest rebooting or creating the Live Disk on the USB drive again.
Somethings wrong there....

Is there an error when you open a NTFS partition?

[chrisbard]

linux update "fixing" what was working?

[Gizmo]

Go to a terminal ( command shell) and show me the output of:

mount

and

ls -l /media/S3A4031D502

I suspect your problem is related to Ubuntu (and hence Mint) having decided to change the mount point-point for user devices from /media/device to /media/user/device. Since those devices had previously been attached to your installation, they already had mount points set up, and Mint is now trying to mount at both the old mount point and the new one.

[booman]

if its already mounted, then try

umount

[Aedan]

Just while I'm thinking - if you've suspended Windows, the NTFS partition is still "in-use" and the Linux drivers will refuse to mount it in case of corruption. Instead, you have to shutdown Windows so that Windows unmounts the NTFS partition. Same goes if you suspend Linux.

[booman]

Interesting though. So you mean Winblows may have gone to sleep/hibernate and he restarted?
I have actually done that before. Put Winblows to sleep and then accidentally restarted and it acted like it just woke-up from sleep again... like it never restarted.

So if Windows thinks its sleeping and you restarted, then ran Live Disk with Linux, that is a possibility for your problem with mounting NTFS.

[Aedan]

Not hair splitting (much), but sleep mode keeps everything in RAM, so you wouldn't have the opportunity to boot another OS. In hibernate, RAM contents are written to disk, so you do have the opportunity to boot another OS.

Yes, I've used that trick frequently to boot between two different OSes and save the majority of boot time. Just remember that your file systems aren't unmounted, so don't try to write data into any file systems that would have been mounted by the hibernated OS. Network storage helps there I guess.

[booman]

Thats crazy, I would never risk it, kinda scared I guess...
But its an interesting idea to dual boot operating systems while in hibernation...

[Aedan]

It works pretty to be honest - especially if you need to flip between OSes to get something done without any virtualisation.

[booman]

I bet...
I have been using a KVM switch to go between my server and my workstation.
But when I need a Steam game on my dual boot workstation, I just mount the NTFS and copy the files to Linux.

[chrisbard]

Originally Posted by Gizmo

Go to a terminal ( command shell) and show me the output of:

mount

and

ls -l /media/S3A4031D502

I suspect your problem is related to Ubuntu (and hence Mint) having decided to change the mount point-point for user devices from /media/device to /media/user/device. Since those devices had previously been attached to your installation, they already had mount points set up, and Mint is now trying to mount at both the old mount point and the new one.

Here it is:

[chrisbard]

or if it all in one command like mount and then the second line it says : only root can do that

[chrisbard]

Originally Posted by Aedan

Not hair splitting (much), but sleep mode keeps everything in RAM, so you wouldn't have the opportunity to boot another OS. In hibernate, RAM contents are written to disk, so you do have the opportunity to boot another OS.

Yes, I've used that trick frequently to boot between two different OSes and save the majority of boot time. Just remember that your file systems aren't unmounted, so don't try to write data into any file systems that would have been mounted by the hibernated OS. Network storage helps there I guess.

Restarted computer with shut down/restart from Windows7, nothing in RAM

[chrisbard]

It was working ok and I uploaded some shots that were on NTFS here on AOA. I remember linux saying something about updating and because I have 1GB of persistance or whatever that is called it worked. But afterwards I did not check for errors or anything assuming everything is ok. But hey NTFS is atm not accessible.

[booman]

Originally Posted by chrisbard

or if it all in one command like mount and then the second line it says : only root can do that

you did it correctly. Gizmo wanted to see the output of mount
It shows all the partitions, devices, etc.
I definitely don't see that drive mounted in mount
It will be hard to manually mount it in Live Disk because you probably don't have a password. And Root doesn't have a password.

[chrisbard]

Hey linux can I have access to my hdd?
You have it is there, oh wait I can't find it!


bump for Gizmo