Hdd loose partititions?x

    Hello.. today my kodi crash ans stop play the movie i look at. I took out all 3 hd and connect them to my laptop without any problem. I then reinstall them and restart the system without luck. How do i do to make them work again? I have 4 partitons on them and just some of them work. Please help me. Best regards Thore from Sweden

    Quote from MatteN

    The usual explanation is that Windows sucks...

    Mmmm, i have noticed that. I read a long time ago that Linux/LibreELEC uses a different format on the hard drives when they are formatted, which makes Linux read them better. Is it true?

    In the past exFAT and NTFS required "userspace" drivers that suffered from slow read/write performance. These days both of those filesystem types have native kernel drivers so performance isn't an issue. However both have reliability issues and NTFS notably can have issues that can only be corrected using chkdsk.exe on Windows. As such, the preferred format for Linux drives in LE is still ext4.

    Quote from chewitt

    In the past exFAT and NTFS required "userspace" drivers that suffered from slow read/write performance. These days both of those filesystem types have native kernel drivers so performance isn't an issue. However both have reliability issues and NTFS notably can have issues that can only be corrected using chkdsk.exe on Windows. As such, the preferred format for Linux drives in LE is still ext4.

    Ok, thanks for the quick reply. I run my disks(around 10TB) with NTFS, as I suspected that it does not work with exfat if files are larger than 4GB. The format you mention (ext4), is there a good guide on how to convert it? Kind regards, Thore

    Quote from 2469

    is there a good guide on how to convert it?

    There's probably something in Google if you look, but realistically there are only two options:

    a) Move data off the disk, change the filesystem type, move the data back.

    b) Shrink the NTFS partition, create an EXT4, start to shuttle the data from one to the other and progressively shrink one, expand the other, until all the data is moved, then delete the NTFS partition and expand EXT4 to 100%.

    Both will be rather slow .. depending on how full the disk(s) are.

    NB: No idea if there's an actual conversion routine. I wouldn't normally trust that kind of thing.

    Quote from chewitt

    There's probably something in Google if you look, but realistically there are only two options:

    a) Move data off the disk, change the filesystem type, move the data back.

    b) Shrink the NTFS partition, create an EXT4, start to shuttle the data from one to the other and progressively shrink one, expand the other, until all the data is moved, then delete the NTFS partition and expand EXT4 to 100%.

    Both will be rather slow .. depending on how full the disk(s) are.

    NB: No idea if there's an actual conversion routine. I wouldn't normally trust that kind of thing.

    Ok, I suspected that's what I have to do. Thanks for all help

    Mini Tool or something like that claims to be able to migrate NTFS to EXT4 with their premium version and recover all your files after the reformat. I was skeptical and took the long road of moving all data to a different drive and reformatting EXT4 then moving it all back. Slow and tedious but data is safe and no further issues with NTFS (Not Too Funky Safe) file system.

    I did it as you suggested, i use a 4TB disc that i split in 4 equel parts(931gb). And then format the partititions to ext4. So now i am going to sleep while i transfer all the files. Thanks for all your help. And just one thought, strange that Windows not have ext4 as a format choice...

    These days you can probably handle ext4 things under WSL, but NTFS dates from '90's era MS which was more aggressively against the idea of allowing use of anything other than the one true OS to rule them all..

    Saw today after I reloaded all the videos from NTFS to Ext4 that I lost a lot of space. Looks like I lost almost 400gb, sounds ALOT to me. Any ideas?

    I'd guess a combination of filsystem formatting options used (defaults are not always the optimum for e.g. big disks) plus inherent differences between filesystem types. It's impossible to know without getting hands-on with the actual drive.