Why can't I write to my external NTFS hard drive, even though my permissions are set?

Question

On Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with a 500GB external WD Hard Drive.

After formatting to NTFS, I can not write files using the graphical Files explorer, I get the pop up error seen below:

Pop up error copying files:

I've tried the following:

$ sudo apt-get purge ntfs-3g
$ sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

This reinstalled the ntfs-3g tools. Great, but I still can't do anything. Here's the out put of ls -al /media, sudo fdisk -l and cat /etc/fstab

$ ls -al /media

drwxrwxrwx   1 kf   kf   4096 May 14 14:09 ntfs

$ sudo fdisk -l 

Disk /dev/sdc: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: FB6876F3-56D8-49CD-B0BB-55B07240A75B

Device      Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sdc1      40    409639    409600   200M EFI System
/dev/sdc2  411648 976773134 976361487 465.6G Microsoft basic data

$ cat /etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name  devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /boot was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=08fdc860-fb67-4527-bf63-5114d08f16f4 /boot           ext2    defaults        0       2
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=8CA6-E334  /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0077      0       1
#/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-swap_1 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/mapper/cryptswap1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/sdc2 /media/ntfs ntfs-3g locale=en_US.UTF-8,permissions 0 0

I've gone through all the other posts here on AskUbuntu about this issue, but nothing has helped. Where do I go next?

Solution

I believe you have to remount the partition/disk in read/write mode. I had same problems with one of newly created partitions. Try

sudo mount -o remount,rw /PartitionID /MountPoint

Enter the right PartitionID and MountPoint.

Comments

[kfrz]

So at this point, I've just done sudo cp Documents/ /media/kf/<UUID>/ and it's copying the files over. Will I be able to recover these files later?

[kfrz]

I tried sudo mount -o remount,rw /dev/sdc2 /media/ntfs and it did not work.

[NonStandardModel]

Try reading this post askubuntu.com/questions/333287/external-hard-disk-read-only

[kfrz]

I follow through that post (again). Remounting with sudo umount /dev/sdc2 and sudo mount -o rw,uid=1000,gid=1000,user,exec,umask=003,blksize=4096 /dev/sdc2 /media/ntfs results in permissions of drwxrwxr-- 1 kf kf 4096 May 14 14:09 ntfs

[kfrz]

And I still can't write to the drive.

[kfrz]

No, not in this case. I've recently used this drive to transfer files from OSX to Ubuntu and had no problems. I'm stuck!

[pfeiffep]

a solution that worked for me in my /etc/fstab UUID=**** /media/Storage ntfs uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=027,fmask=137,windows_names 0 2 of course replacing **** with actual uuid and the word Storage to one of your choice ...

[kfrz]

This also didn't work for me. I still get the error on attempted write.

[oldfred]

Did you mount with Windows 8 or 10? That leaves the hibernation set unless you have turned off fast start up in Windows. Or it may need chkdsk which you can only run from Windows or a Windows repair flash drive.

[kfrz]

All of this mounting/formatting has been done in Ubuntu 16.04

[Daniel Buckmaster]

Thanks! This worked for me with an NTFS-formatted thumb drive. I found the /PartitionID using sudo fdisk -l and the /MountPoint by browsing under /media/my_username and looking for the drive's name.

[Ashraful Alam Imran]

I couldn't solve from the accepted answer. I had to read the comments for how to know the Partition ID's. So I thought someone might find it helpful if I put this together. I had quite a hassle to find the solution