How do I mount a hibernated NTFS partition?

Question

I have a Windows HDD attached to an external docking bay on my Ubuntu System, but the HDD brings up an error message:

Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 14: Windows is hibernated, refused to mount.
Failed to mount '/dev/sda5': Operation not permitted
The NTFS partition is hibernated. Please resume and shutdown Windows
properly, or mount the volume read-only with the 'ro' mount option, or
mount the volume read-write with the 'remove_hiberfile' mount option.
For example type on the command line:

       mount -t ntfs-3g -o remove_hiberfile /dev/sda5 /media/92441EC8441EAF4B  

I am at a loss for exactly how to remove the hiberfile, or even mount it as read-only or read-write. I tried directly copy and pasting that exact command into my terminal, but it said:

mount:only root can do that

I do not know what to do at this point. I do need to get the information off of this drive, but I do not have a computer to put it in. Does anyone know what I should do from here?

Solution 1

You need to use sudo before the command it gave you. So typing the following in a terminal should work.

Big Disclaimer:

Running this will delete the hibernation file, which as I understand it will not damage Windows, but will delete any hibernated session that you have saved. If you were working on something in Windows that you did not save before you hibernated you will lose your work if you run this command!

If you understand the above, the command you should run is:

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g -o remove_hiberfile /dev/sda2 /media/FE46D60C46D5C615

Solution 2

Enter the following commands:

sudo mkdir /mnt/spider 
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g -o remove_hiberfile /dev/sda2 /mnt/spider

Remember to replace the drives name from /dev/sda2 to yours. You can find the name of your drives by using the command sudo fdisk -l .

Solution 3

The main answer is very simple: You'll have to run the command as root. As such, you'll have to add sudo in front of the command (sudo mount ... - replacing mount ... by the command you're prompted to execute).

However, what you want to do is mount as read-only, as you only want to retrieve the information. Removing the hiberfile is dangerous, if you ever plan on using the Windows installation that placed the hiberfile again. You would prefer to use the -r option (sudo mount -r /dev/sda2) to force read-only mode.

Which mounts the drive as read only. This prevents you from writing to the drive, and thus prevents you from changing what might be actively used by another OS, which in turn might corrupt the entire other OS upon reboot.

Comments

[Mochan]

Welcome to Ask Ubuntu, Casval Deikun! When copy and pasting your command into a terminal, please consider adding sudo at the beginning. This will give you superuser (root) rights, and will ask you for your administrative password. Let me know if this helps :)

[Casval Deikun]

Thank you very much. I did try the remove hiberfile command first, as I was being hasty lol but it worked :) I'll remember both of these commands for the future.

[user98085]

@Casval Deikun Glad I could help. Please remember to accept the answer you deem most fitting.

[Gearoid Murphy]

remove_hiberfile no longer works, see this answer: askubuntu.com/a/526792/15650

[Oliver Salzburg]

@GearoidMurphy Works just fine for me, the solution in your linked answer doesn't however.

[user3757405]

remove_hiberfile worked fine for me on 16.04. (Reporting: "The disk contains an unclean file system (0, 0)." "The file system wasn't safely closed on Windows. Fixing."), after which I could mount with rw.

[kleinfreund]

@mwfearnley On Ubuntu 16.04, sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdXY worked perfectly for me.

[Jay Lux Ferro]

To mount as readonly to a specified directory(eg. /mnt/) sudo mount -r /dev/sda2 /mnt where /dev/sda2 is your filesystem block for the ntfs partition. To mount the partition as read/write sudo mount -o remove_hiberfile /dev/sda2 /mnt

[Kadu Diógenes]

It's worked for me in manjaro. ntfsfix can be found in ntfs-3g package if this answear doesn't work.

[Aquarius Power]

worked, but I did not have to use -t ntfs-3g, it mounted rw and was fine, thx!