Cant access drives prepared in Windows

Question

Recently I've installed Linux Mint Cinnamon alongside Windows 10 on my SSD. However, the other two drives I have are not properly recognized by Linux Mint.

One appears on the File System tree, but I can't access it, and the other doesn't even appear. When I try to use fdisk this is what I get:

sudo fdisk -l
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: dos
Disk identifier: 0x49649181

Device     Boot Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1          63 1953523119 1953523057 931,5G 42 SFS

Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.


Disk /dev/sdb: 111,8 GiB, 120034123776 bytes, 234441648 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xfaf5a060

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1  *         2048 159942232 159940185 76,3G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2       159942654 233478143  73535490 35,1G  5 Extended
/dev/sdb3       233478144 234436607    958464  468M 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sdb5       159942656 233478143  73535488 35,1G 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order.




Disk /dev/sdc: 1,8 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 24A51F7E-9C3C-11E1-831D-705681C4DD72

Device      Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sdc1      34       2081       2048    1M Microsoft LDM metadata
/dev/sdc2    2082     262177     260096  127M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sdc3  262178 3907029134 3906766957  1,8T Microsoft LDM data

The sda is the one that shows up on the file system tree, and sdc is the one that does't.

When I use fdisk -l /dev/sda I get

sudo fdisk -l dev/sda
fdisk: cannot open dev/sda: No such file or directory

I get this with either of the HDDs.

I have tried shutting off windows hibernating mode, have tried creating a partition on the sda using GParted, but the disk still does't show up.

This is the description I get from GParted for sdc

And this is the one for sda

But either way, I'd like to access the data there is on these HDDs using Linux, which I can using Windows.

I'm very new to Linux, and I'd like to have some help with this. Thank you.

Answer 1

/dev/sdc is a Microsoft Dynamic Disk, which "is a proprietary format of Microsoft developed together with Veritas". There exists a tool for Linux called ldmtool that advertises that it can be used to manage Windows dynamic disks. I haven't tried it.

There is an error in your fdisk command: the leading slash in /dev/sda is missing.

Answer 2

I went to Windows and discovered that both of them were Dynamic Disks. I turned them into basic and now they are running with no problems.