Background
In the previous post, I explained how I could restore all my files from a lost/wasted NTFS partition after trying to solve its mounting problem using fdisk. After restoring all files, I have formatted the partition and performed a chkdsk to ensure there are no errors. Then I booted into Ubuntu and tried to access that partition; again, no luck, I got the same error:
Error mounting filesystem
Error mounting/dev/nvme0n1p4 at/media/peshmerge/ B4644C2A644BEE24: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on/ dev/nvme0n1p4, missing codepage or helper program, or other error (udisks-error-quark, 0)
It just felt odd, why would a freshly formatted NTFS partition would not be accessible from Ubuntu, while I was always able to do that? In addition, I was not able to access my external HDD as well! So, it was not just a problem related to my internal SSD, but rather a problem within my Ubuntu.
Instead of jumping straight to use fdisk, this time, I installed gparted and decided to format the partition hoping that might help. On the main screen of gparted I saw a red exclamation mark next to all NTFS partitions on my SSD. I highlighted that specific partition and chose “Information” from the context menu. And the following warning caught my attention immediately:
Warning:
Unable to read the contents of this file system!
Because of this some operations may be unavailable.
The cause might be a missing software package.
The following list of software packages is required for ntfs file system support: ntfs-3g/ntfsprogs.
The solution
As you saw/read, the problem is as follows: My Ubuntu is missing some software packages to be able to read/write to NTFS storage. gparted has suggested the ntfs-3g package.
ntfs-3g is not native Linux software but is a widely used, open-source solution for NTFS file system support on Linux. It operates in userspace via FUSE and provides full read-write functionality, unlike the native Linux kernel NTFS driver.
I installed the package using the sudo apt install ntfs-3g command, and there you go. I was able to access all NTFS partitions on my SSD and external HDDs as well!
I was never aware of this issue regarding reading/writing to NTFS partitions. I always took it for granted assuming that it was well-managed by the Linux kernel itself. However, the built-in native NTFS driver within the Linux Kernel currently supports read-only mode (with no fault-tolerance, encryption, or journalling) and very limited, but safe, write support.
While it is claimed that the native driver is sufficient for mounting and accessing files on NTFS, I was not able to do that. Therefore, I had to install the ntfs-3g package to access and read/write to NTFS storage/partitions.
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