Score:0

Kubuntu can't write to secondary internatl hard drive

me flag

EDIT: I figured out what was going on. I had used the storage drive as a backup when I was setting up the dual boot (just incase windows crapped itslef) and apparently those windows system files were causing errors and Linux was defaulting to read-only as a safety measure.

By removing those files, I was able to get Linux to write to the drive again and the problem is solved!

I had to boot into Win10 to delete them, but I was able to remove them and now Linux has access to the drive and I'm all set!

Just wanted to edit this post and put the solution up top so that people could see it got fixed.


Okay, so I've got a computer with 3 hard drives.

  • 1 drive is my Kubuntu boot drive (formatted as EXT4)
  • 1 drive is a Win10 drive (formatted as NTFS, FAT32, or EXT4 (depending on the partition))
  • 1 drive is a storage drive (formatted as NTFS) that should be accessible by both OS's

I have dual boot set up with GRUB and that isn't giving me any problems.

My issue is this: Kubuntu cannot write to the storage drive. I've triple checked that windows is letting go of it when it shuts down, AND Kubuntu is saying that I have read/write permissions. HOWEVER when I try to actually put a file on that drive, it's a no go. Won't do it. Says I don't have permission.

I've tried sudo chmod ugo+wx [drive location] and also sudo mount -o remount,rw [drive location] and it hasn't worked. Or it's worked until I've had to reboot the computer and then it doesn't work anymore

Does anyone have ANY idea what might be going on? I have this large storage drive holding files I'd like to be able to access in Linux and I just.... can't. It's frustrating in the extreme

Drives: physical mounted internal drives. All 3 of them. They're literally screwed into the case. There's no USB connections at all here.

System Info (and yes everything is up to date):

Operating System: Kubuntu 22.10
KDE Plasma Version: 5.25.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.98.0
Qt Version: 5.15.6
Kernel Version: 5.19.0-35-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 16 × Intel® Core™ i9-9880H CPU @ 2.30GHz
Memory: 31.2 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080/PCIe/SSE2
Manufacturer: HP
Product Name: OMEN by HP Laptop 17-cb0xxx
cn flag
`sudo chmod ugo+wx` is a POSIX/Linux tool/method/command and it does not work for windows filesystems so forget about that. Besides mounting it with writable status check the mount point in /etc/fstab and make sure user and group are correct. Those 2 are the most common reasons. The 3rd one is the filesystem: you need a driver for ntfs, and for exfat. Check what filesystem it is with `fdisk -l` and check if you have the corresponding driver (mind that you would see an error when mounting so this is likely not the issue)
Serenova avatar
me flag
@Rinzwind the drive is an NTFS format so that both windows and linux can access it. I have had it accessible in the past, it is a new development that linux cannot write to it. I have edited my original post to say which drive is formatted as which file system. I can mount the drive and open files on the drive, however, despite linux saying it has read/write permissions, it is being treated as read-only. There isn't an entry for the drive in etc/fstab that I can see? But i also may not be reading the file correctly
mchid avatar
bo flag
Is it possible that windows isn't actually shutting down but actually going into a fastboot or hibernated state? Also you would probably see an error for that too but it does happen.
Serenova avatar
me flag
@mchid that's a setting you can turn off in Windows. I've tripple checked that that setting is OFF. I had that issue when I first set up the dual boot and it was fixed. And yes, I know there have been windows updates since then, but I keep checking, and it's still turned off. Hell, i made sure that setting was turned off when I was ONLY using windows cause i have shit battery life on my laptop as-is and that made it way worse.
mchid avatar
bo flag
Have you tried umask and/or dmask and fmask options? There's an example at the end (the last example) of [this answer](https://askubuntu.com/a/956072/167115). There's also [an explanation of the number options here and they are different from chmod numbers](https://wrapper.tanukisoftware.com/doc/english/prop-umask.html). So basically, if you set the `umask` options to `000` or `0000`, it will give full permissions for everyone and everything, similar to `chmod 777`.
cn flag
@mchid "similar to *mounting with* chmod 777" ;-)
ar flag
This is a question answer site. Please don't put the answer inside the question. Use the **Answer your own question** button to answer the question. Provide details so that the answer is useful to others.
I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

mangohost

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.