Create a shared drive in dual boot between Fedora and windows11

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1

I have Fedora36 and windows11 installed on the same SSD. I have a separate HDD I want to use to share between the OSs.

$ lsblk -a -o PATH,FSTYPE,UUID
PATH                      FSTYPE      UUID
/dev/sda                              
/dev/sda1                 ntfs        96806DE2806DC977
/dev/zram0                            
/dev/mapper/nobaraVG-root ext4        c58834a5-ed98-4e58-a262-c905384f6c1a
/dev/mapper/nobaraVG-home ext4        7151af90-b8ab-418c-a607-82896371bf5b
/dev/nvme0n1                          
/dev/nvme0n1p1            vfat        9839-34AF
/dev/nvme0n1p2                        
/dev/nvme0n1p3            ntfs        1E1C3A571C3A2A63
/dev/nvme0n1p4            ntfs        DE96364096361A0B
/dev/nvme0n1p5            ext4        ae022667-835d-4df9-8e5e-8028d1e40488
/dev/nvme0n1p6            LVM2_member SAX4bc-2pXh-qcTf-Pplt-igbp-4xZU-f6N6tN

I am trying to follow this site. /dev/sda1 is what I have to use as the shared drive. Most sites after a quick search on how to do it recommend formatting the drive as ntfs but I also noticed someone mention ntfs is poorly supported in Linux. I am also supposed to edit /etc/fstab to add this UUID=96806DE2806DC977 /home/mxfuuu/sda1 ntfs defaults,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0

I wanted to know if I am doing anything wrong before I proceed. Should I continue with ntfs? And if there’s going to be any issue adding the line in /etc/fstab since none of the lines are separated with a comma( , ).

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2

Looks good. I would add “nofail” to the options so if there are any problems with the file system, it would not prevent the system from booting up.

defaults,uid=1000,gid=1000,nofail
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3

you think I am good to go with ntfs?

4

Yes, go with NTFS: Linux can read/write NTFS, but Windows uses only NTFS(Bitlocker?) without WSL (that should be tested before deciding the file system). Attention to encrypted Linux file-systems (LUKS).

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5

I ran the whole thing and windows no longer booted. When I removed and connected the HDD back, it did boot but didn’t show the HDD.

I ended up deciding to back everything up and reinstall everything. I customized the iso of the windows installation and later disabled certain features to harden it which involved USB/devices autoplay. I tried restoring it but didn’t work maybe because I removed too many bloatware and services from the iso than necessary.

I have to do a freash install.

6

The reason windows did not see it was that windows did not create that device. If you use windows to create the device then modify fstab to mount the device (test mount it manually first) things should work.

However, there also may be an issue with windows 11 using bitlocker since AFAIK fedora is not able to access a bitlocker device.

2 Likes
7

For what it’s worth, there is a btrfs driver for Windows. It has BitLocker support, but you won’t want to enable it if you want Linux to be able to read/write as well.

Another option is to setup your own Nextcloud server (which is in the Fedora repos) and use the nextcloud client to sync the data between your Windows and Fedora environments over the network. This is what I do at home and what my wife uses between her Windows and Fedora stuff.

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8

I actually did just that, create drive using windows and setup on fstab on fedora. Windows was stuck on leading screen, until I removed the HDD and removsd the line from the fstab

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9

Not sure what changed but I fell asleep after downloading iso’s and preparing for the reinstall.

This morning I decided to try again and the HDD was working properly without causing any issues in booting.

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10

I have a similar setup with one additional HDD as a backup for the shared HDD. The backup HDD is bigger in size than the shared HDD. While I am on windows, I use synctoy to replicate what is in shared HDD to backup HDD. I haven’t found a easy to use tool to do the same replication while I work on Fedora.

I then made my onedrive-personal storage location in the shared HDD so I can sync some of the important personal documents with my work laptop. Then I realized that fedora cannot see the onedrive folder in the shared HDD.

Then I migrated to googledrive and made googledrive storage location in the shared HDD. Fedora mounts to the googledrive in the cloud and not to the googledrive in the shared HDD. There is a huge lag while editing files directly from the googledrive in cloud from Fedora.

11

Does nextcloud allows to keep the local (offline) storage location in a shared HDD which is accessible from both Windows and Fedora?

12

Sure - Nextcloud can be LAN only. My nextcloud server is running under my desk in my home office, all with local storage (except for s3 as a remote backup for the data).

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13

Just wanted to mention that you also need to disable fast restart and hibernation on windows. If not, windows will let you use the drive as read-only when you use Linux.