I just made the switch to Linux, but I'm having a tough time accessing my external SSD that has a partition formatted with NTFS. I also created a new ext4 partition for testing, but I really want to access the files on my old NTFS partition. Some folks suggested using GParted, but I'm not sure how to go about it. Can someone guide me on the best way to access my files?
3 Answers
If your NTFS partition is giving you issues, try running CHKDSK in Windows to fix any corruption. Alternatively, NTFSFIX can solve some basic problems, but it’s not perfect since NTFS is proprietary. You could also boot from a USB with AOMEI Partition Assistant and run repairs that way. Once you have access, consider backing up your files and formatting the drive to ext4 or BTRFS for better compatibility with Linux.
There are tons of guides online on accessing NTFS drives with Linux. You probably don’t need GParted just to access your files; it’s mainly for managing partitions. Usually, you just click on the drive in your file manager, but if it’s not working, that could hint at a problem with the NTFS partition itself.
It really depends on what Linux distribution you’re using. Usually, you need to mount drives in Linux to access them. If your SSD is formatted as NTFS, it might show up in your file manager, and you can just click to mount it. If it’s not appearing, there could be some issues, or it might open as read-only due to corruption.
I'm using Arch, so I know that mounting can slightly differ based on the desktop environment. You might need to do it manually in some cases.