Page 1 of 1

Files/Directories on exFat are not viewable from Windows (ran chmod 777 DIRECTORY/ -R)

Posted: 02 Jan 2020, 20:43
by JasonF4
Linux is writing files to a Windows exFat partition on a Windows OS disk which are INVISIBLE to Windows. How do I make these files visible to Windows?

I used Photorec, from Linux (running on an external SSD), to recover files to this exFat partition (internal drive).

The exFat partition is 62% full, but Windows reports it as being empty, with all the space free (!!!).

I rebooted into Linux (external SSD w/Linux,), and mounted the exFat partition again to make sure the files were actually there. (That's a 700GB partition, and there is nowhere else that could come close to holding that data). Linux sees the files on that exFat partition.

I ran chmod 777 FOLDER/ -R, and then checked in Windows again. Windows still reports that the partition is empty (!!!).

The TestDisk documentation on Photorec says that Windows may need to take ownership of the files to access them, but the link they give says how to change the permissions of the recup_dir.1 (.2 ...) directories from WITHIN Windows - where they are not viewable. That document is here: https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_FAQ

I tried the suggestion anyway, on the disk rather than the directory.

[Administrator command prompt]
C:\WINDOWS\system32>takeown /f e: /r /d y
ERROR: File ownership cannot be applied on insecure file systems;
there is no support for ACLs.

So this isn't the problem, as it isn't relevant to exFat.

I dare not write anything to this partition from Windows, or do anything else with it from Windows, as Windows believes it is empty. Photorec ran for 5 hours creating those restored files.

Re: Files/Directories on exFat are not viewable from Windows (ran chmod 777 DIRECTORY/ -R)

Posted: 03 Jan 2020, 10:40
by cgrenier
Try "chkdsk /f e:". Do you see the files after that or does it modify the "free" space amount ?

Re: Files/Directories on exFat are not viewable from Windows (ran chmod 777 DIRECTORY/ -R)

Posted: 03 Jan 2020, 22:40
by JasonF4
chkdsk. Windows reported the partition was locked, and asked it I wanted to unlock it. I said No, as it said it would delete open handles. I booted back up in Linux, and the files are gone. (!!!) I'm not bothering to try to restore them, as I can just run PhotoRec again. In researching this, I see a lot of people have had problems with exfat. I'm going to re-run PhotoRec, this time having that partition formatted as NTFS (no fast-booting or hibernating...)