Pi4- USB NTFS HDD mounting for idiots

[Buffabrew]

I'm new here, so sorry if the formatting is wrong and/or the answer to this question seems very obvious.

I have a Raspberry Pi4, and am attempting to gain read/write access to a Seagate 2TB HDD that was formatted NTFS when plugged into one of the USB 3.0 ports. Whenever I try to install ntfs-3g, I get the following message

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ntfs-3g is already the newest version (1:2017.3.23AR.3-3)

Additional Googling and searching around this forum has mentioned that I should try changing fstab, but I do not know what that is nor how to do it. I'll admit I am a completely new linux and Raspberry Pi user, but want to learn!

Is there any step-by-step resource that can explain this, broken down enough for novices to understand? I've looked at this thread, this article, this article, and others, but can't seem to get it to work. I think I need to have my terminal logged in as the root user, but I'm also unaware of how to do that?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, even if it's just a "linux for dummies" tutorial that shows step by step so that I can learn and solve this issue.
Thanks in advance!

[HawaiianPi]

If you are using Raspbian with the Raspberry Pi desktop it should auto-mount when you plug it in. It normally mounts in /media/pi/drivename, assuming the default user, and drivename will be the actual name of the drive. If you right-click on the desktop, go to Desktop Preferences and check the Mounted Disks item, the drive will appear on the desktop for easy access.

If you are using Raspbian Lite then you need to mount it yourself. Using /etc/fstab it would look something like this:

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PARTUUID=1a2b3c4d-01  /media/pi/USBDRIVE  ntfs-3g  nofail,uid=1000,gid=1000  0  0

Again, assuming the default user, and you can create whatever mount point name (folder) you want.
nofail will allow the system to boot when the drive is not connected.
uid & gid are the user and group ID for owner/write privileges (1000 is the default pi user).

For non-Linux file systems you must specify the permissions in the mount command or fstab. Setting them for the folder will not work, because non-Linux file systems do not support Linux permissions.

[Buffabrew]

Thanks for the response, HawaiinPi!

If you are using Raspbian with the Raspberry Pi desktop it should auto-mount when you plug it in. It normally mounts in /media/pi/drivename, assuming the default user, and drivename will be the actual name of the drive. If you right-click on the desktop, go to Desktop Preferences and check the Mounted Disks item, the drive will appear on the desktop for easy access.
...

I can confirm that this is the case with my USB HDD. I am using Raspbian with the Raspberry Pi desktop, and I've been able to confirm that when I plug in the HDD and turn it on it auto-mounts to /media/pi/drivename (with drivename being the actual name of the drive). I can also see it on the Desktop.

The issue is that the drive, when auto mounted, does not allow me to write to it. I can read files from it, I can copy files from it onto my Pi desktop/onto the micro-SD card, but I cannot modify, or add additional files to the HDD. Is there anything else I can do to get this to work?

[LTolledo]

can you post the output of:

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ls -la /media/pi/drivename

[Buffabrew]

Sorry for the delay. The output is merely a list of all of my folders/files on the drive:

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ls -la /media/pi/'Seagate Barracuda 2TB'

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total 2720
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi      8192 Mar 23  2019  .
drwxr-x---+ 3 root root    4096 Mar 18 18:29  ..
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi         0 Feb 13  2015 '$RECYCLE.BIN'
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi      8192 Feb 25  2019  Books.Print
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi         0 Mar  1  2016  Config.Msi
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi      4096 Dec 14  2018  Education.College
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi      4096 Feb 27  2019  Games
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi     28672 Mar 23  2019 'Google Drive'
-rwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi     84718 Jun 29  2018  log.txt
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi         0 Feb 27  2019  msdownld.tmp
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi         0 Mar 10  2016 'System Volume Information'
...
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi         0 Jun 22  2018  WUDownloadCache

[LTolledo]

we'd like to know the ownership and permissions applied to the drive
looking at the output its seems that the ownership is set to user 'pi'
and given full (r/w) access to all

if you are logged in as 'pi'....
you should be able to write/save/transfers files to the drive....

[Buffabrew]

I think we are getting to the crux of the issue- I am logged in as "Pi", and whenever I plug in this USB HDD, it mounts as read only. The HDD in question is a 2TB mechanical HDD.

Earlier today I tried mounting a 500 GB Solid State drive (via a 3.5" Drive enclosure to USB adapter), and it mounted correctly let me read/write/delete files on the system. Is there any reason that this 2 TB drive seems to default mount as read-only?

[FTrevorGowen]

I think we are getting to the crux of the issue- I am logged in as "Pi", and whenever I plug in this USB HDD, it mounts as read only. The HDD in question is a 2TB mechanical HDD.

Earlier today I tried mounting a 500 GB Solid State drive (via a 3.5" Drive enclosure to USB adapter), and it mounted correctly let me read/write/delete files on the system. Is there any reason that this 2 TB drive seems to default mount as read-only?

Two "things"
1) If you are logged in as "Pi" that's not the same as being logged in as "pi" - Linux user names etc. are case sensitive but I suspect "Pi" was a typo???
2) Are you using the filemanager directly or the desktop shortcut? You may be falling foul of this behaviour I've recently noticed: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=268347
Trev.

[LTolledo]

its really strange...
if the same occured to my situation....
I'd copy the contents of the drive to another drive(s)
then format the questionable drive using my known tools to format a drive

if the same condition persist after several attemps.... then its bye bye drive for me....( and buy buy drive)

[Buffabrew]

sorry FTrevorGowen, it was a typo above. I'm logged in as 'pi', not 'Pi'.

Your link was interesting. I tried using the filemanager directly AND the desktop shortcut, and still am only able to access the drive as Read Only.

[FTrevorGowen]

sorry FTrevorGowen, it was a typo above. I'm logged in as 'pi', not 'Pi'.

Your link was interesting. I tried using the filemanager directly AND the desktop shortcut, and still am only able to access the drive as Read Only.

FWIW, I've just plugged in an ntfs formatted Seagate** 1TB expansion drive and it auto-mounted correctly for both FileManager routes and the "comand-line":

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pi@raspiP4B4b-32GbP:~ $ ls -laF /media/pi/
total 32
drwxr-x---+  4 root root  4096 Mar 19 22:07  ./
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 Jun 20  2019  ../
drwxr-xr-x  10 pi   pi   16384 Jan  1  1970  KINGSTON/
drwxrwxrwx   1 pi   pi    8192 Apr 21  2019 'Seagate Expansion Drive'/

Trev.
** Model PN 1D6AP3-501

[LTolledo]

I'd like to test this myself.... is this on a recently updated/upgraded Raspbian buster on RPi4B?

***Update****

so I tried doing this on a NTFS formatted 1TB drive connected to my RPi4B-4G, last updated last week

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/dev/sda1: LABEL="M1TB" UUID="01D4073FC6EE0A10" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="43c35e36-01"

and tried copying a video file from my NAS to this drive, using pcManFM
the copy process completed without any problems

other outputs:

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pi@RPi4B-4G:/media/pi $ ls -la
total 12
drwxr-x---+ 3 root root 4096 Mar 20 07:32 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Nov 11 22:52 ..
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi   4096 Mar 20 07:33 M1TB

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pi@RPi4B-4G:/media/pi/M1TB $ ls -la
total 1070752
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi        4096 Mar 20 07:43  .
drwxr-x---+ 3 root root      4096 Mar 20 07:32  ..
drwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi        8192 Sep 15  2019  Faves
-rwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi        1977 May 29  2019  fstab
-rwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi   467449903 Jan 25 16:51  nanopi-neo2_debian-nas-jessie_4.14.0_20171208.img.zip
-rwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi   628968926 Mar 20 06:01 'Show By Rock!! Mashumairesh!!.mkv'
-rwxrwxrwx  1 pi   pi        7244 Dec  4 22:56  test.xlsx

the mkv file was the one copied from my NAS to the NTFS drive automounted by RPi4B-4G

[FTrevorGowen]

I'd like to test this myself.... is this on a recently updated/upgraded Raspbian buster on RPi4B?

I'm not sure if you're referring to my post(s) or the O.P's - in my case, yes (see other thread linked to earlier for "uname" info.)
Trev.

[LTolledo]

I'd like to test this myself.... is this on a recently updated/upgraded Raspbian buster on RPi4B?

I'm not sure if you're referring to my post(s) or the O.P's - in my case, yes (see other thread linked to earlier for "uname" info.)
Trev.

I've read your newly opened topic first before I replied to this topic... really strange "buglet" you mentioned....

anyway this is the screen cap before updating

screen cap b4 update-upgrade.jpg (48.2 KiB) Viewed 1121 times

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pi@RPi4B-4G:/media/pi $ sudo apt update
Get:1 http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian buster InRelease [15.0 kB]
Get:2 http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian buster/main armhf Packages [13.0 MB]      
Hit:3 http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian buster InRelease                             
Fetched 13.0 MB in 47s (275 kB/s)                                                        
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
2 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.
pi@RPi4B-4G:/media/pi $ sudo apt full-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  alsa-base gstreamer0.10-alsa gstreamer0.10-plugins-base
  libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0 libgstreamer0.10-0 libllvm8 libva-wayland2
  libxfce4util-bin libxfce4util-common libxfce4util7 libxfconf-0-2 pimixer xfconf
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be upgraded:
  libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18 libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37
2 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 12.2 MB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Get:1 http://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/Linux/raspbian-archive/raspbian buster/main armhf libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 armhf 2.26.4-1~deb10u2+rpi1 [9,933 kB]
Get:2 http://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/Linux/raspbian-archive/raspbian buster/main armhf libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18 armhf 2.26.4-1~deb10u2+rpi1 [2,258 kB]
Fetched 12.2 MB in 5s (2,499 kB/s)                     
Reading changelogs... Done
(Reading database ... 161258 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37_2.26.4-1~deb10u2+rpi1_armhf.deb ...
Unpacking libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37:armhf (2.26.4-1~deb10u2+rpi1) over (2.26.4-1~deb10u1+rpi1) ...
Preparing to unpack .../libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18_2.26.4-1~deb10u2+rpi1_armhf.deb ...
Unpacking libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18:armhf (2.26.4-1~deb10u2+rpi1) over (2.26.4-1~deb10u1+rpi1) ...
Setting up libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18:armhf (2.26.4-1~deb10u2+rpi1) ...
Setting up libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37:armhf (2.26.4-1~deb10u2+rpi1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.28-10+rpi1) ...
pi@RPi4B-4G:/media/pi $ 

and the screen cap after update-upgrade and rebooting

screen after update-upgrade reboot.jpg (40.93 KiB) Viewed 1121 times

the status of my 1TB NTFS drive remains the same....

[Buffabrew]

My "permissions" window looks identical, and yet the HDD is still read-only. I also fully updated my system ("sudo apt update" and "sudo apt full-upgrade"), rebooted, and my problem persists...

I did note that the left hand pane of my FileManager looks slightly different. All of the HDD drives/files are listed under "/media/pi/Seagate Barracuda 2TB", but oddly, there is another folder listed at "/media/Seagate-2TB". When I click on that folder, there is nothing listed in the main FileManager pane... Here is a screencap with that other Seagate-2TB highlighted, and showing no items in the main FileManager pane:



Maybe in trying to mount this HDD, I've messed something up? Any way to restart or other advice?

[LTolledo]

can you please refresh me on how you are mounting that drive?
by hotplugging?
or via fstab?

knowing so... I may be able to suggest a work around

[Buffabrew]

I think I'm hotplugging (just plugging the drive into the USB port, then turning it on).

[LTolledo]

for hot plugging, usually (in desktop version of Raspbian) its automounted in /media/pi

once automounted go to that directory
then change ownership and permissions using chown and chmod respectively

next time that drive is hotplugged and automounted, the ownership and permissions will automatically "kick in"

this is what I did for my hotplugged NTFS drives

[Buffabrew]

sorry it isn't obvious to me, but who should I be changing the permissions to? It seems as though they are already set up with permissions of the "pi" user.