HDD is now read-only after changing from NTFS to ext4

General system Newbie
1

Hey, super-new Endeavour user here. Just today I was trying to install Steam games on my HDD, but they would not launch after installing them. Pretty quickly I discovered that the issue was that my HDD was NTFS, which is not compatible. To change it to ext4, I tried following this guide, and I made sure to not mistype or do anything wrong.

However, after following all the steps, I noticed that I wasn’t able to create any folders or files in there. The Properties window brought me this:

After that, I tried unmounting the disk and then trying to fix any errors with it. First I did:

$ sudo fsck -f /dev/sda1

Which resulted in:

fsck from util-linux 2.39.2
e2fsck 1.47.0 (5-Feb-2023)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
yura: 12/61054976 files (0.0% non-contiguous), 4115203/244190390 blocks

After that, I tried to remount it by using the mount command:

$ sudo mount -o remount,rw /dev/sda1 /run/media/azarth/yura

However, it does not mount. Instead it says:

mount: /run/media/azarth/yura: mount point not mounted or bad option.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

I have tried checking dmesg, but it has so much information in there that I don’t know what to actually consider or not to fix this problem.

Any help?

2

That screenshot looks like it is not read-only, rather it is rw only for root. You can take ownership of the directory where the disk is mounted with chown and that may resolve your issue.

sudo chown -R azarth:azarth /path/to/mountpoint

That is user:group for ownership (you can put your username twice).

Before you do that, it must be mounted.

The remount option doesn’t work if the disk is not mounted. Try mounting it without that option.

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /run/media/azarth/yura
2 Likes
3

Thank you! Such a simple fix but I would have never imagined this was it :sweat_smile:

4

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