[SOLVED] Linux unable to recognise windows partition

[mohittomar13]

I tried to find the solution to this problem today for the whole day but nothing seemed to be matching with the weird problem I'm facing on my system.

I use Linux in dual boot mode with Windows 10. Though I use windows mostly for gaming but it was getting so slow that I had to do a clean install. So I deleted the existing C drive (partition) the Recovery Partition and the EFI partition. And created a new partition. Then I used windows 10 USB to install the OS. Everything seemed perfect and windows installed without any problem. Later I installed GRUB using the live cd. It was giving an error of "EFI directory not found", but that was obvious as I deleted the old one and the new install created a new EFI with different UUID than what was present in "fstab" of my existing Linux. Anyways I fixed that issue and then both the OS were available on the GRUB menu.

However, what the problem is neither of my C and D drives is visible to my existing Linux system. In KDE Partition manager it shows both the partition with unknown type filesystem.

I also tried to disable fast boot in windows 10

I'm attaching the screenshot and the output of fstab, fdisk -l and lsblk below.


The output of fdisk -l

mohit@Dell3568:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for mohit:
Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: FD8815B8-3C75-46D7-BAD1-54182F2E7861

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 1085439 1083392 529M Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda2 1085440 1290239 204800 100M EFI System
/dev/sda3 1290240 1323007 32768 16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sda4 1323008 805308415 803985408 383.4G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda5 805308416 1811941375 1006632960 480G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda6 1811941376 1886334975 74393600 35.5G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda7 1886334976 1953523711 67188736 32G Linux filesystem

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Output of lsblk

mohit@Dell3568:~$lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 529M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 100M 0 part /boot/efi
├─sda3 8:3 0 16M 0 part
├─sda4 8:4 0 383.4G 0 part
├─sda5 8:5 0 480G 0 part
├─sda6 8:6 0 35.5G 0 part /home/mohit
└─sda7 8:7 0 32G 0 part /
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom

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These partitions are clearly visible to windows operating system but onlyLinux is not able to find them. I'm talking about /dev/sda4 and 5

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I also tried to manually (created customMnt as mount point under /mnt directory) mount the partition by explicitly providing the file system type using the mount -t option in the mount command, but I got error, see below:

mohit@Dell3568:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/customMnt/
mount: /mnt/customMnt: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda4, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

mohit@Dell3568:~$sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sda4 /mnt/customMnt/
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sda4': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sda4' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?

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Also, I'm quite new to Linux operating system and still learning to use it, so whenever I face any problem I simply ask. All the so-called knowledge I have of Linux is only because of forums like KubuntuForums and Ubuntu Forums and some of my daily research... :-) :-)

Thanks in advance for any help.

[mohittomar13]

I forgot to attach the screenshot of the KDE partition manager and my dolphin. Please have a look.

Thanks

[mohittomar13]

Only the HomePart and LinuxRoot are available under Devices section.

(HomePart is my home directory which is on a separate partition and LinuxRoot is the root partition)

[jglen490]

Using the mount command has failed because an entry in fstab does not match what mount sees for the referenced partition(s). it may be a bad UUID or something is screwed up in the mount options, or ...

Use cat or less or your favorite utility to list the contents of /etc/fstab, then copy and paste that list into a CODE box (the # button) in your reply. A CODE box is a lot easier to read than a simple text list!

Also in the same way capture the output of

lsblk -f

and paste that into a CODE box. Then we can compare data to data and see if there is any mismatch. If no mismatch, then we can move on to something else.

[mohittomar13]

A CODE box is a lot easier to read than a simple text list!

I will surely do that the next time I need to provide some kind of output. I really appreciate your help, but the issue is resolved for now.

For others who are facing the same problem, they can follow the steps below: (this is what I did)

1) Login to windows
2) Go to "my computer"
3) Right-click drives that are shown with an unknown filesystem in Linux and enable BitLocker on those drives
4) Wait for 1 minute and then disable the BitLocker by right-clicking the drive
5) After the above step, the "Yellow Exclamation" mark will be removed from the drive's icon
6) Now login to Linux system and the drives should show under the devices in the file explorer.

The above worked for me, and I hope it works for others too.

Why does this work? Not sure but I read somewhere that Linux is not very friendly with disk encryption options provided by windows, maybe that is one of the reason.

Thanks :-)

[Snowhog]

Why does this work? Not sure but I read somewhere that Linux is not very friendly with disk encryption options provided by windows, maybe that is one of the reason.

(emphasis added by Snowhog)
I'd suggest that it's the other way around; Windows is not very friendly with its encryption options to other operating systems, i.e., Linux.

[mohittomar13]

I'd suggest that it's the other way around; Windows is not very friendly with its encryption options to other operating systems, i.e., Linux.

haha..Ok.. :-) :-)

By the way, MS has now realised that they need to incorporate Linux functionalities / commands in windows. If I'm not wrong, I think, now terminal commands are available on windows PowerShell / cmd prompt. Not so sure, as I don't use windows much.

Thanks, Snowhog :-)