[SOLVED?!]LM20 files on NTFS disk not seen in Windows 10

[jautaikis]

Recently migrated to Linux Mint 20 from Windows 10. I now do 90%+ of all my work in Linux but I often need to transfer files (Word, Excel, jpg, png, pdf, etc) from Linux to Windows and/or Windows to Linux. Not sure if this is a dual boot machine since I'm either booting up in Windows 10 from the PC internal disk or booting up in Linux Mint 20 from an external USB drive. No problems running/using Linux and/or Windows.

Here is my environment:

Lenovo All-In-One PC running Windows 10 on an Internal 1 TB hard drive
Linux Mint 20 installation on an External USB3 4 TB hard drive
External NTFS formatted USB3 2 TB data hard drive for data storage and data transfer between Linux and Windows 10

Here is my problem:

When I boot in Windows 10 using my internal 1 TB c: drive - I see the External NTFS 2 TB drive and I can copy/save any and all files to the disk. I can create directories and place files into them. No problem ... normal Windows 10 operation.

When I boot in Linux Mint 20 using my external 4 TB drive - I see the External NTFS 2 TB drive and all the files & directories copied/created in Windows 10 ... I see all files/directories created in Windows 10 and can edit/copy/delete/manipulate any and all files without issues using Linux programs (Writer, Calc, GIMP, Master PDF, etc.) ... normal Linux operations as expected.

While working in Linux Mint 20 I have no problems creating directories, copying/saving files to the external NTFS formatted 2 TB hard drive ... BUT when I shutdown my Linux Mint 20 and boot up into my Windows 10 environment, I still see the external 2 TB drive but NONE of the files are visible and if a directory was created in Linux it may be seen in Windows 10 but it states that the directory is empty.

Why can I transfer files from Windows 10 using an external USB3 NTFS formatted drive to Linux Mint 20 but when I try to transfer files from Linux Mint 20 to Windows 10 the files cannot be seen and the directories are empty?

As a work around, I am using a Google Account Drive to upload/download files between the environments but I'm hoping to find an easy straight seamless way to moves files back and forth using the 2 TB external NTFS drive.

Thanks for your help ...

[mikeflan]

I don't know. That doesn't make sense. Unless maybe the file transfer from LM to 2TB drive did not take place.
Please describe this further:

I still see the external 2 TB drive but NONE of the files are visible

Does that mean according to Windows there are absolutely no files on the 2TB drive at all? Maybe just empty directories only? For testing purposes, please stick to simple, regular files (txt, pdf, xls, etc.), so they are unlikely to be interpreted as hidden files. Make sure there are files that Windows placed in the directory before transferring more files to that same directory on the 2TB drive from LM.

[karlchen]

Hello, jautaikis.

Could it be that the files, which you create on Mint 20 and save on the "problematic" NTFS formatted drive in question, hold characters, which must never occur inside Windows filenames, namely a colon : e.g.?

It happened to me in the past a few times. When saving webpages as files under Linux Mint, the suggested filenames held a colon :. No problem on Linux. But on Windows the colon can only be the character after drive letters like in A:, B:, C:, D: etc.
Result:
On Windows the saved webpage files were not accessible. (I cannot remember for sure whether the filenames were displayed at all.)

Karl

[jautaikis]

I don't know. That doesn't make sense. Unless maybe the file transfer from LM to 2TB drive did not take place.
Please describe this further:

I still see the external 2 TB drive but NONE of the files are visible

Does that mean according to Windows there are absolutely no files on the 2TB drive at all? Maybe just empty directories only? For testing purposes, please stick to simple, regular files (txt, pdf, xls, etc.), so they are unlikely to be interpreted as hidden files. Make sure there are files that Windows placed in the directory before transferring more files to that same directory on the 2TB drive from LM.

The file transfer from LM to 2TB NTFS drive did take place. I checked an double checked when in LM to make sure the files are there. I also used a 1TB and a 4TB NTFS drive to test things out and got the same results - While in Windows the files do not appear.

For testing purposes, I did stick with simple regular files (doc, pdf, xls, jpg, etc.). To the best of my knowledge none of the files could be interpreted as hidden files. While in Windows I also made sure that show hidden files was selected. I did place a hand full of simple files on the disk while in Windows and also created a few directories with files in them. I can see them in Windows and in LM ... But not the other way around!

[jautaikis]

Hello, jautaikis.

Could it be that the files, which you create on Mint 20 and save on the "problematic" NTFS formatted drive in question, hold characters, which must never occur inside Windows filenames, namely a colon : e.g.?

It happened to me in the past a few times. When saving webpages as files under Linux Mint, the suggested filenames held a colon :. No problem on Linux. But on Windows the colon can only be the character after drive letters like in A:, B:, C:, D: etc.
Result:
On Windows the saved webpage files were not accessible. (I cannot remember for sure whether the filenames were displayed at all.)

Karl

Unfortunately no hold characters were used in any of the file names. File names have no spaces, special characters, etc and then have regular extensions like .pdf, .jpg, ,xls ... since I ran multiple tests using the 2TB drive, a 4TB drive, and a 1TB drive with the same results then I have concluded that it's not a NTFS formatted drive issue. I have no clue as to what it could be and I have searched using all the wording I could think of without finding a solution.

[mikeflan]

I've never seen this or even heard of it until now. It will be interesting to see how this one is resolved. You think these things can't happen and then along it comes. If you lived near me (Houston, TX) I'd say bring it over and show me.

Here's an idea. Look at the disk size on windows and LM. Then put a bunch of files on it. Does the used disk space go up on LM, but not on Windows? I would guess Yes.

[jautaikis]

I SOLVED my issue but not the problem - I found what I think might be a bug with the way Linux Mint 20 handles large external USB drives files that are intended to be shared on Linux and Windows 10. Spent days researching a way to share files between the 2 operating systems (see my original post above). Using a 2TB drive formatted in NTFS, FAT32, and exFAT (installed exfat-fuse and exfat-utils) I discovered that files & directories written to disk while in Windows 10 work perfectly fine when using the 2TB in Linux Mint 20 ... BUT any files & directories written to the disk in Linux Mint 20 (are seen on the disk in Linux) are not seen on the disk in Windows 10!! Didn't matter if I formatted the 2TB disk using LM20 or Windows10 ... nothing I tried worked.

Problem is everything I read said that it should be able to do what I need to do! But it doesn't work when using my 2TB external USB 3 drive. I kept seeing references to flash drives and/or thumb drives so I decided to run some tests using a 4GB thumb drive. To make a long story short, I formatted the 4GB drive as NTFS, FAT(16), FAT32, and exFAT and repeated all the test I mentioned above. Everything worked like it should!!

I am able to transfer files between Linux Mint 20 and Windows 10 or the other direction without any problems using the 4GB thumb drive but not the 2 TB external USB drive. Bottom line ... I solved my issue but not my problem. Not sure if this is a bug or something I am not doing correctly.

[mikeflan]

Thanks for putting in the time to run that down. We are very interested in this problem you are having.

I found what I think might be a bug with the way Linux Mint 20 handles large external USB drives files that are intended to be shared on Linux and Windows 10.

Just to clarify - I'm hoping there is no bug in LM20 regarding large, external hard drives. Hundreds of LM20 users share files between Win10 and LM this way every single day. I'm thinking none have ever seen the problem you report. You have confirmed with other drives you own. The file system works as designed.

I would put a big sign on that 2TB drive saying something fishy is going on with that drive. And I would encourage you to investigate this further. You should do every scan possible on that disk. We would like to know what it is about that drive that would cause this very unusual failure. You should also expect for that drive to fail completely very soon, although it might not.

[jautaikis]

The 2TB drive is a brand new Western Digital (WD) easystore USB 3.0 portable hard drive. I do not believe there is anything wrong with the drive since it works perfectly in Linux and/or Windows when formatted in NTFS, FAT32, and exFAT. As I stated before, I used exfat-fuse and exfat-utils when the disk was formatted in exFAT. I also used guiformat.exe to format the 2TB drive in FAT32.

Yes, brand new hard drives can be bad but all indications to me are that the drive appears to be functioning OK.

When I researched the problem I found most answers/solutions were for dual boot machines. My environment is basically 2 stand alone operating systems using the same hardware with the Windows 10 using the internal drive to boot and the Linux Mint 20 using an external drive to boot. I then want to use an external NTFS formatted drive to store/access files from that external data drive no matter what OS I'm running. If I'm using a 4GB thumb drive, it all works as expected with NTFS, FAT32, and/or exFAT.

I also have an additional 4TB external USB 3.0 drive that i use for data and it acts the same way as the 2TB drive. Why such huge drives? Because storage is so cheap now. I can get a 2 to 4TB external drive for around $100. I'm "young enough" to remember the first 1GB SCSI hard drive at work costing my employer around $10,000!!