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I have an external hard drive with Windows 8 installed on it. Ubuntu cannot mount this drive.

Failed to mount '/dev/sdb5': Operation not permittedThe NTFS partition is in an unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown
Windows fully (no hibernation or fast restarting), or mount the volume
read-only with the 'ro' mount option.

I'm not using this Windows installation right now, so I don't mind deleting it. What can I do to fix this? Do I have to delete some partitions in the drive? If so which ones? Or is there an easier way?

Thanks.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the Windows installation is broken so I have no way of booting into it and shutting it down properly. Also, the main partition of the HDD (not the windows partition) has important data.

Final Update (Solution):

Check this tutorial.

john
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2 Answers2

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if you wish to delete the windows installation, you can either delete the partition with fdisk or the like, or simply make a new filesystem with the mkfs command, like so: mkfs -t <filesystem type> /dev/sdb5, where filesystem type can be any number of supported filesystems, including ntfs, ext{2,3,4}, fat{12,16,32}, and so fourth. But, this seems a bit overkill. You can simply boot the windows partition and properly shut it down.

hanetzer
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You just have to follow the instructions in the error message.

Windows was not shut down properly, but suspended (hibernated to be exact). This is also automatically done instead of shutting down if you have enabled the FastBoot option.

So now it still has marked the drive as used somehow which prevents Ubuntu from getting full (r+w) access to the drive. You can mount it as read-only without problems, though.

The easiest solution to get full access to the drive without doing any damage is to restart your machine, boot into Windows, disable FastBoot if necessary and properly shut it down. Boot Ubuntu up and mount the drive.
Finished!

Byte Commander
  • 110,243