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Hardware - Support => Hard Drives and SSDs => Topic started by: mike3000 on November 16, 2021, 08:55:52 AM

Title: Data disk not visible
Post by: mike3000 on November 16, 2021, 08:55:52 AM
Hi everyone
I am quite fresh at Linux. I have dual boot win+Lin and two partitions: windows + programs and Linux installation along and another data partition. The problem is that Data partition is not visible in File manager. I can see windows and other programs, but data is not visible. In partition manager it says 1TB Data, unknown.


<img src="https://i.ibb.co/VWYyxb5/file-manager.png" alt="file-manager" border="0">

<img src="https://i.ibb.co/xSw5vmF/Screenshot-harddrive.png" alt="Screenshot-harddrive" border="0">
Title: Re: Data disk not visible
Post by: stevef on November 16, 2021, 10:10:31 AM
That looks like a Microsoft LDM partition.

Logical Disk Manager is Windows' dynamic disk management system which allows for disk volumes to span multiple partitions, even across multiple physical disks. Linux won't readily read an LDM volume.

For a dual boot system sharing files, the shared files needs to be on a file system both OS understand.
Title: Re: Data disk not visible
Post by: mike3000 on November 16, 2021, 10:16:10 AM
That looks like a Microsoft LDM partition.

Logical Disk Manager is Windows' dynamic disk management system which allows for disk volumes to span multiple partitions, even across multiple physical disks. Linux won't readily read an LDM volume.

For a dual boot system sharing files, the shared files needs to be on a file system both OS understand.

Thank you for explanation. What would you suggest? Data partition is now NTFS, what shall I format it into?
Title: Re: Data disk not visible
Post by: mike3000 on November 16, 2021, 10:31:08 AM
What about ntfs-3g? Do I install debian package: https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/ntfs-3g or there is more work needed to make this work.
Title: Re: Data disk not visible
Post by: stevef on November 16, 2021, 12:12:53 PM
Linux can access NTFS volumes so it is OK for a volume shared by two OS. There can be permission issues (amongst others), but none of the possible combinations are perfect.  FAT32 would be another possibility.

Did you try mounting the NTFS volume through the GUI and get permission problem ?  This can be because Windows hasn't fully freed up the volume when it shuts down if it is set for fast boot/shutdown.

To dig further you may need to work from CLI to find out a bit more about what's going on.  If you are using LL5.6 ntfs-3g (and fuse) should already be installed and there are plenty of guides covering shared drives but proceed with caution if you've got anything important on the disks.

https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-mount-partition-with-ntfs-file-system-and-read-write-access
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/35807/how-to-harmonize-your-dual-boot-setup-for-windows-and-ubuntu/

Hope these links help.

 
Title: Re: Data disk not visible
Post by: mike3000 on November 17, 2021, 03:02:45 AM
Linux can access NTFS volumes so it is OK for a volume shared by two OS. There can be permission issues (amongst others), but none of the possible combinations are perfect.  FAT32 would be another possibility.

Did you try mounting the NTFS volume through the GUI and get permission problem ?  This can be because Windows hasn't fully freed up the volume when it shuts down if it is set for fast boot/shutdown.

To dig further you may need to work from CLI to find out a bit more about what's going on.  If you are using LL5.6 ntfs-3g (and fuse) should already be installed and there are plenty of guides covering shared drives but proceed with caution if you've got anything important on the disks.

https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-mount-partition-with-ntfs-file-system-and-read-write-access
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/35807/how-to-harmonize-your-dual-boot-setup-for-windows-and-ubuntu/

Hope these links help.

Thank you.

PS. I must say that linux is still for geeks and someone must make transition from windows easier for more people to use linux. Just saying.
Title: Re: Data disk not visible
Post by: firenice03 on November 17, 2021, 09:30:56 AM
@mike3000


If the disk was a standard NTFS disk - Linux Lite would see and be able to mount the disk. *but do make sure to disable fastboot in Windows.
If fastboot is enable its does not release the disk and would keep any other OS from mounting. 2 entities trying to write to the disk.... Safety feature.


See my screenshot below of the same..


Give Linux time, its similar but is different and may take a minute to learn those differences but LL is the most user friendly specially coming from Windows....


LDM is a bit of a special - its spanning/raid/Windows specific stuff for disks.
*Depending how you have configured there maybe a tool (ldmtool) to allow to read the data. If the LDM is a raid there maybe caveats... Specially if unhealthy..
Can see here - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8427372/windows-spanned-disks-ldm-restoration-with-linux


I have not used the tool or played with LDM outside of windows... In Linux I have used LVM's which can be used to span similarly.


If you attempt anything - make sure you have a back up - there is always the just in case.
And a backup (TimeShift) of your LL, it'll make a better recovery point to revert if those/the tools is not useable to borks LL.




  (http://imgur.com/CZygxEyl.png)
Title: Re: Data disk not visible
Post by: mike3000 on November 18, 2021, 06:44:45 AM
The disk is standard NTFS disk. Before installing Linuxlite I had a little incident, that I am not sure if it could affected the situation. On a Data disk I created an efi partition for some another Linux experiment, and I wanted to delete it. With cmd I accidently deleted whole D partition and it wasn't visible anymore. I managed to recover it with windisk and it is working normally now. I just don't know if during this process, some attribute could be lost that would cause disk not to be visible.

I am not a computer guy, but I like to experiment, and sometimes things don't workout well and I need a rescue.  :P