Arch Linux

mayonnaise

Member

Registered: 2022-08-25

Posts: 2

Arch not detecting some Windows partitons

I have 2 drives, a 225Gib SSD and a 1TB HDD on a laptop. I have used Linux before with Windows and had no issues with detection and auto mount. Also new to linux so just learnt a few command line stuff and ricing, that's about it. The SSD encountered no issues because there is just one whole windows partition to be displayed. I partitioned a separate 129GiB for root, which also worked. There are 3 more ntfs partitions that I used as storage in Windows but only one is being displayed as New Volume. I have tried normal solutions such as mounting or checking for the support for mounting ntfs files but its not working.

when used fdisk -l, it displays:

Device         Start        End    Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1         34       2081       2048     1M Microsoft LDM metadata
/dev/sda2       2082     262177     260096   127M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sda3     264192    1347583    1083392   529M Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda4    1347584    1552383     204800   100M EFI System
/dev/sda5  272930816  274159615    1228800   600M Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda6  274159616 1953525134 1679365519 800.8G Microsoft LDM data
/dev/sda7    1552384  272930815  271378432 129.4G Linux filesystem

Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition table entries are not in disk order.

/dev/sda6 seems to recognize all the space as 800 GiB but only shows the 263GiB New Volume partiton?
Might the two missing partitions be the statements saying "Partition 1/2 does not start on physical boundary"?
tried seeing if thunar worked instead of dolphin with no luck

Sorry, I am a newbie so thanks if someone could help out.

TsarKy

Member

Registered: 2022-08-25

Posts: 4

Re: Arch not detecting some Windows partitons

Hi mayonnaise,

I can’t say I’m much of an advanced user but it might be helpful to have someone work it through with you - plus it’s often quicker to get a correction to a wrong answer than the right answer to a question.

The first confusing thing is the shared ‘sda’ designation, I would have expected one device - your SSD for example - to be ‘sda’, while the other (HDD) was ‘sdb’. There’s no obvious reason why the shared device name would inhibit NTFS but maybe it’s an exception no one’s coded for. Is there a way to specify the device labels so they’re distinct?

Secondly, have you taken a look at the arch wiki articles relating to the package ‘ntfs-3g’? That’s where I had to start to get my HDD up and running.

Good luck, please let me know if you make any progress - I’m curious now!

TsarKy

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,263

Re: Arch not detecting some Windows partitons

Afaik LDM data is microsofts logical disk manager/proprietary RAID solution which is likely why you see both disks as one logical big volume. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dynamic_disks for tooling that might help you access this.

Last edited by V1del (2022-08-25 08:50:55)

mayonnaise

Member

Registered: 2022-08-25

Posts: 2

Re: Arch not detecting some Windows partitons

Hi mayonnaise,

I can’t say I’m much of an advanced user but it might be helpful to have someone work it through with you - plus it’s often quicker to get a correction to a wrong answer than the right answer to a question.

The first confusing thing is the shared ‘sda’ designation, I would have expected one device - your SSD for example - to be ‘sda’, while the other (HDD) was ‘sdb’. There’s no obvious reason why the shared device name would inhibit NTFS but maybe it’s an exception no one’s coded for. Is there a way to specify the device labels so they’re distinct?

Secondly, have you taken a look at the arch wiki articles relating to the package ‘ntfs-3g’? That’s where I had to start to get my HDD up and running.

Good luck, please let me know if you make any progress - I’m curious now!

TsarKy

Sorry I was out for a few days, but I do have the SSD displayed separately, I just didn't really show it here because the SSD doesn't seem to have any issues with working.
Using fdisk, the SSD is displayed as:

Disk /dev/sdb: 223.57 GiB, 240057409536 bytes, 468862128 sectors
Disk model: TS240GMTS820S   
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: B47F8A9D-94A9-48F5-B5D0-845831CD2739

Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sdb1       2048    206847    204800   100M EFI System
/dev/sdb2     206848    239615     32768    16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sdb3     239616 467650825 467411210 222.9G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sdb4  467652608 468858879   1206272   589M Windows recovery environment

It also seems like there are already ntfs-3g drivers installed if I search for it. What is confusing me here is why one ntfs partition is showing but linux cannot recognize 2 other partitions on the same drive, even though it does recognize the whole ntfs partitions as a 800GB disk (there are 4 partitions in total for the HDD, 1 is the linux partition where I installed the system).