Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 is suspiciously good

So I took the Linux Challenge. I learnt a bit too much and broke my install of UG 14 LTS. Two problems I did not fix before the crash were dual screen positions resetting and not being able to access my HDD.

So i've got 2 SSDs: one Windows and one Linux. Then I have a 3TB HDD to store music, files ect.

Keen to keep learning Linux I re-installed Ubuntu GNOME but this time it was 15.04. The dual screen problem was fixed automatically which was great but somehow I can now access the HDD too.

I remember my HDD's file system was incompatible with Linux. I was getting all prepped to back up all my drives an reformat as some file system I researched so that it would work with both Win and Linux.

My questions; am I missing something? Will I run into problems with 2 OSs sharing this HDD? Any idea why it now works? Should I just roll with it?

Thanks.

What type of file system are the Harddrives that you couldn't see before? I have an ssd with windows and ubuntu on it and they both share my ntfs data drive D. I actually have my downloads folder from windows mounted into the downloads for linux to ease on ssd writes.

Not sure actually. NTFS?

Well it doesn't say what it is, did you format the drive with windows? If so then it is ntfs unless you told it fat32.

alternatively you could download gparted from the ubuntu software center and it should be able to tell you what it is.

With NTFS you need the package ntfs-3g for it to work.

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True but he is using ubuntu which should work out of the box with ntfs.

Booting into Windows and looking a Disk Management, we are all right. Its NTFS. Using GPT instead of MBR to get the full 3TB. Perhaps NTFS-3g is now included in 15.04! That could be why.

So do you think i'll run into any problems with my current set-up?

I don't think so, maybe some permission issues not really as knowledgeable on this part of linux. I don't have issues but I don't do too much with my 2nd drive mostly just save my decrypt key and downloads onto it and I don't have issues with that.

It depends on what you want to use the drive for, but I don't think you'll have problems, I'm sure there is a way to make it auto mount on boot but for me i have to click it to mount it so i can see the files I tried to make it auto mount the downloads folder from the second drive into the linux downloads but it failed at boot saying it couldn't, but this is something that i probably did wrong.

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Thanks for the reassurance. Also, it already auto-mounts on boot :D.

+1 on permissions.

It could also be that you want to add that drive to your fatab config (it is what handles drive mounting and mapping on boot)

Edit: I guess you did that already

As long as its just for generic files you shouldn't see a problem. NTFS doesn't work with Linux permissions very well but I imagine your on a single user system so it won't be much of a problem.

You may or may not find that occasionally windows or Linux wants to repare the drive (more likely on portable drives) or won't mount because of a bad unmounta (happens on Linux if windows doesn't shutdown properly)

But generally it's OK.

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Thanks Eden. That sounds more like the insight I was looking for.

Ideally, you would have either 1 drive for Windows data and 1 drive for Linux data. Or you would have 1 drive with 2 equal partitions. 1, NTFS. 1, EXT4. That way, you only have to defrag one partition. You can also store all your Windows stuff on one partition. It would also store anything you wanted to access from both Operating systems. The Linux partition would store everything only needing to be accessed from Linux.