Arch Linux

ducks4rule

Member

Registered: 2024-03-11

Posts: 10

[SOLVED] Can't open ntfs hard drive

I installed the ntfs3-dkms package, but somehow it still doesn't work.
My current kernel is 5.12, if it is worth updating the kernel, I could consider this, how do I update the kernel however?

Thank you community

Last edited by ducks4rule (2025-03-31 09:28:43)

GMP

Member

Registered: 2014-02-26

Posts: 31

Re: [SOLVED] Can't open ntfs hard drive

You're running kernel 5.12, which is very outdated and unsupported on Arch. Modern Arch kernels (starting from 5.15) already include the ntfs3 driver built-in—so you likely don't need the ntfs3-dkms package at all.

NTFS3 was merged upstream into the kernel in 5.15. You can read more:
NTFS3 pull request

To update your kernel, just update your system fully:

sudo pacman -Syu

Then reboot into the new kernel.

You can confirm that NTFS3 is available on your system by checking:

zgrep NTFS /proc/config.gz

Look for a line like:

CONFIG_NTFS3_FS=m

Also, it's unclear what "doesn't work" means. For future posts, try to include:
- What exactly you're trying to do (e.g., mount an NTFS drive?)
- What command you ran
- What error or behavior you saw

That way, others can help more effectively.

After rebooting, try mounting the NTFS partition without installing ntfs3-dkms—you likely won’t need it at all.

---

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

ducks4rule

Member

Registered: 2024-03-11

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Can't open ntfs hard drive

Thank you for the answer. Now normal mounting works. The kde file manager, can not mount it automatically yet however. But i think that is ok.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,076

Re: [SOLVED] Can't open ntfs hard drive

What's your general system state? As mentioned running the 5.12 kernel in the first place sounds very weird and I doubt it'd be the only thing that's outdated... Don't run Arch if you can't update in a timely fashion.

ducks4rule

Member

Registered: 2024-03-11

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Can't open ntfs hard drive

I misread the kernel number. It was 6.12 and I updated it to 6.13 now. Everything else is up to date. The issue with the ntfs came about b/c instead of mounting the drive the normal way, I followed the trouble shooting advice in the wiki and tried to mount w/

 mount -t ntfs3 /dev/sdxY /mnt 

which didn't work.

This whole post could have easily been avoided, by just trying the standard way first sorry

In case sb still sees this: any ideas, why the KDE file browser can't mount the ntfs drive like the other drives?