Hi all! I have installed Garuda Linux and I have an issue that I’m hoping you can help me figure out, as I’m still relatively new to this.
I have a drive (specifically a 500gb SATA SSD if it matters) that has files from my old Windows install that I want to keep (roughly 150 GB of data) The goal was to transfer these files to my new Garuda install without having to buy something like an external hard drive.
The problem is I can’t find how to view this drive without reformatting and wiping it. I’ve been searching online for “Can you mount a drive without wiping it”, “garuda linux see all partitions” and the like but I haven’t found anything but that I’m SOL.
If there is a way for me to do this? If there is a post on these forums about it, please link me there cause I can’t seem to find it. If not, I’d greatly appreciate the walkthrough. Thanks!!!
edit: for the record I also have no idea if this is possible in Windows either, so my plan may just be bad
You’re probably not finding much, because having to wipe an NTFS volume to read it is not really a thing. Windows OS drives can be a pain, though, as NTFS-3G errs on the side of paranoia, especially regarding hiberfil.sys. To get point easy GUI automounting, you need a cleanly shutdown system, and that file gone. If you can still boot Windows, run powercfg -h off in an admin command prompt, restart into Linux, and you should be fine. If you can’t get back into Windows, check out ntfsfix, which often works, and will do no harm if it can’t fix things.
My apologies here it is. I can’t see anything in my file explorer besides my home drive, I looked on Partition manager to see if it would give me the path but it wouldn’t let me access them.
so a few more things have happened, I’ve confirmed that the drive isn’t mounted, nor are my 2 Hard disk drives. When attempting to mount from command line, I get
mount: /mnt/c: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdc2, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.
dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
when looking it up, I found recommendations to check FSCK. this is what happens when I try that
fsck from util-linux 2.40.2
e2fsck 1.47.1 (20-May-2024)
ext2fs_open2: Bad magic number in super-block
fsck.ext2: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks…
fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda2
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a valid ext2/ext3/ext4
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2/ext3/ext4
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193
or
e2fsck -b 32768
I checked the DMESG and this is the error it said for all the drives I tried mounting
[ 7371.114271] FAT-fs (sda2): bogus number of FAT structure
[ 7371.114277] FAT-fs (sda2): Can’t find a valid FAT filesystem
so far all that I can find ends up sending me in a circle
The following worked for me, no guarantee, adapt to your conditions.
Try to copy first your data.
Then
fdisk /dev/nbd0
Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.40.2).
Changes are initially only made in memory until you log in
decide to write them.
Be careful before applying the write command.
I decided to try and put the drive in my partner’s Window’s pc, and it turns out that the drive got corrupted. I’m running disk recovery now, but it looks like this was an issue caused by my drive being Raided (something I thought it wasn’t) and because it was raided it ended up becoming corrupted at some point. Thank you all for your help, unfortunately I think it’s all in the hands of data recovery tools now