NTFS Partitions not recognised

Duke Nukem · 2019-02-04 17:39:58

I have four HDDs, one of which is dedicated to Windows and has four primary MBR type partitions. Windows works fine, but although Linux sees the drive as sdb, it does not see the partitions. I first noticed this because trying to mount the Windows partitions under Devuan failed.

[root@mesh-devuan:~] # cat /proc/partitions 
major minor  #blocks  name

   8        0  244198584 sda
   8        1   51761398 sda1
   8        2   51761430 sda2
   8        3   51761430 sda3
   8        4   88911742 sda4
   8       32  976762584 sdc
   8       33  156250112 sdc1
   8       34  156250112 sdc2
   8       35  156250112 sdc3
   8       36  156250112 sdc4
   8       37    8388608 sdc5
   8       38   25165824 sdc6
   8       39  318206663 sdc7
   8       16   78150744 sdb
   8       48    4202415 sdd
   8       49     262206 sdd1
   8       50     999810 sdd2
   8       51    2940367 sdd3
  11        0    1048575 sr0

Yet cfdisk does see them :-

                                   Disk: /dev/sdb
                Size: 74.5 GiB, 80026361856 bytes, 156301488 sectors
                         Label: dos, identifier: 0x2de32de2

    Device       Boot         Start        End   Sectors   Size  Id Type
    /dev/sdb1                  2048     206847    204800   100M   7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT 
    /dev/sdb2                208845   31423139  31214295  14.9G   7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
    /dev/sdb3              31423140  110157704  78734565  37.6G   7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
    /dev/sdb4             110157705  156296384  46138680    22G   7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
    Free space            156297216  156301487      4272   2.1M

What is going on here? AFAIR I created the sdb partitions under Windows, because in my experience Windows does not see partitions as the correct size if installed into partitions created earlier under Linux.

BTW, the 100Mb sdb1 was created by Windows 7 for some purpose.

Last edited by Duke Nukem (2019-02-04 17:41:39)

rolfie · 2019-02-04 19:38:51

Duke Nukem wrote:

BTW, the 100Mb sdb1 was created by Windows 7 for some purpose.

There is enough info in the net about this partition under Win7. It hosts the boot manager.

You seem to have an older PC with Bios or run your UEFI bios in CSM mode. Is this ASCII you are working with? What comes to my mind is that ntfs3g might be missing, though I would expect that it is installed automatically. Though this should not inhibit the display of the existing partitions.

What does blkid show?

Have you tried gparted?

Regards, Rolf

PedroReina · 2019-02-04 19:46:57

Duke Nukem wrote:

trying to mount the Windows partitions under Devuan failed.

Could we see the exact command you tried and the error you got? I mean, from the command line.

ralph.ronnquist · 2019-02-04 20:29:15

In order to deal with exfat file systems, you need to have the exfat-fuse and exfat-utils packages installed.

Duke Nukem · 2019-02-04 20:33:47

PedroReina wrote:

Could we see the exact command you tried and the error you got? I mean, from the command line.

OK :-

[root@mesh-devuan:~] # mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb2 /mnt/windows/
ntfs-3g: Failed to access volume '/dev/sdb2': No such file or directory

ntfs-3g 2014.2.15AR.2 integrated FUSE 28 - Third Generation NTFS Driver
                Configuration type 7, XATTRS are on, POSIX ACLS are on

Copyright (C) 2005-2007 Yura Pakhuchiy
Copyright (C) 2006-2009 Szabolcs Szakacsits
Copyright (C) 2007-2014 Jean-Pierre Andre
Copyright (C) 2009 Erik Larsson

Usage:    ntfs-3g [-o option[,...]] <device|image_file> <mount_point>

Options:  ro (read-only mount), windows_names, uid=, gid=,
          umask=, fmask=, dmask=, streams_interface=.
          Please see the details in the manual (type: man ntfs-3g).

Example: ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows

News, support and information:  http://tuxera.com

FWIW I get exactly the same result with mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb2 /mnt/windows/ and ntfs-3g /dev/sdb2 /mnt/windows/

blkid shows info about the other drives but sdb does not appear at all.

This is ASCII and ntfs-3g is installed. It would seem the problem is with non-recognition of the partitions' existence and it does not even get as far as trying to read the file system. I'm wondering if partitions created in Windows have a different indexing or header or something, which is why Linux does not recognise them. It is an older mother board without UEFI.

sdd1 and sdd2 are vfat partitions and they can be mounted with no problem in Linux.

Duke Nukem · 2019-02-04 20:45:13

ralph.ronnquist wrote:

In order to deal with exfat file systems, you need to have the exfat-fuse and exfat-utils packages installed.

I had never heard of exfat and Wikipedia says it is a file system for flash drives etc. Surely my hard drives formated under Windows as NTFS would not be exfat? I understood that the "Type" shown eg by cfstab (Type 7 in this case and described as "HPFS/NTFS/exFAT") is purely nominal and is not used functionally by modern Linux - you could call it what type you like and it would make no difference, or so I thought.

PedroReina · 2019-02-04 22:27:25

Duke Nukem wrote:

It would seem the problem is with non-recognition of the partitions' existence

Agreed. But it is strange that cfdisk can see them.

Duke Nukem wrote:

I'm wondering if partitions created in Windows have a different indexing or header or something, which is why Linux does not recognise them.

Very unlikely, IMHO. I've deal hundreds of times with setups like yours and your issue is new to me.

I'm scratching my head right now. But I'm confident that a solution eventually came up from this forum.

PedroReina · 2019-02-04 22:34:01

You could try this: https://superuser.com/questions/111151/ … -partition

rolfie · 2019-02-06 13:40:41

Got nearly 20 years of experience with running Windows in parallel to Linux, never saw something like this. Based on this I would recommend to closely look to the Windows side of things.

I am running ASCII amd64 with MATE on an UEFI board under 4.18 Kernel on a nvme ssd, and Win7 Prof 64bit on sda. Mate automatically pulls ntfs3g and exFAT as dependencies. Also put in an exFAT formatted USB stick sdf, the output from /proc/partitions looks like this:

# cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name

 259        0  250059096 nvme0n1
 259        1     248832 nvme0n1p1
 259        2    1999872 nvme0n1p2
 259        3   64000000 nvme0n1p3
   8        0  488386584 sda
   8        1     261120 sda1
   8        2     131072 sda2
   8        3  274746368 sda3
   8        4  213245952 sda4
   8       16 1025600184 sdb
   8       17  958490624 sdb1
  11        0    1048575 sr0
   8       32 1953514584 sdc
   8       33 1953513472 sdc1
   8       64 3907018584 sde
   8       65 1953509376 sde1
   8       66  268435456 sde2
   8       67 1685071872 sde3
   8       48    7620288 sdd
   8       49    7616256 sdd1
 254        0   63997952 dm-0
 254        1   31997952 dm-1
 254        2   31997952 dm-2
 254        3  958488576 dm-3
 254        4 1953507328 dm-4
 254        5  977272832 dm-5
 254        6  976232448 dm-6
 254        7 1953511424 dm-7
 254        8 1685071616 dm-8
   8       80   30703616 sdf
   8       81   30699584 sdf1

No gaps in the display. The dm's are due to encryption.

32bit or 64bit should not matter, never had problems mixing them. ntfs filesystem is ntfs filesystem.

First of all run chkdsk on every Win7 drive including the C drive (requires a reboot and will be performed during startup). If that does not fix, obtain a gparted life cd suitable for your hardware, and check what gparted is reporting about your Win7 disk.

Good luck, Rolf

Last edited by rolfie (2019-02-06 13:40:56)

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2019-02-04 17:39:58

NTFS Partitions not recognised

#2 2019-02-04 19:38:51

Re: NTFS Partitions not recognised

#3 2019-02-04 19:46:57

Re: NTFS Partitions not recognised

#4 2019-02-04 20:29:15

Re: NTFS Partitions not recognised

#5 2019-02-04 20:33:47

Re: NTFS Partitions not recognised

#6 2019-02-04 20:45:13

Re: NTFS Partitions not recognised

#7 2019-02-04 22:27:25

Re: NTFS Partitions not recognised

#8 2019-02-04 22:34:01

Re: NTFS Partitions not recognised

#9 2019-02-06 13:40:41

Re: NTFS Partitions not recognised

Board footer