Dual booting Windows 10 and can't access your disks?
Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2015 4:56 pmIf you dual boot Windows 10 with another OS (like Linux), you might find that the NTFS file system drivers are unable to mount your Windows disks if you've previously shutdown Windows rather than restarted. This is because Windows 8 introduced the notion of a "hybrid shutdown" feature where part of the resident in-memory copy of Windows is persisted to disk during the shutdown process, creating a kind of partial "hibernation"-like state (similar to but different from the hibernation option). When the machine starts up, it reads OS state from the partial hibernation file and skips part of the initialization process. In theory, this should reduce boot times substantially, but it also causes Windows to mark NTFS in such a manner that other file system drivers will presume the partition was not cleanly unmounted. Thus, especially if you're using ntfs-3g, you won't be able to mount your primary NTFS partition from another OS.
Unfortunately, you also only have one option: Disable it.
To do so, go to Settings (or PC Settings if you're using Classic Shell), System, Power & Sleep, Additional Power settings, and click on "Choose what the power buttons do." (Optionally, if you have Classic Shell, you can skip most of these intermediate steps by clicking control panel and going straight into Power Options, then "Choose what the power buttons do"). From here, click the "Change settings that are currently unavailable," and uncheck "Turn on fast startup" under shutdown settings.
This will disable hybrid shutdown. It may also increase you boot times, but it's the only way to guarantee your Windows disks will be accessible from other operating systems, even if you've recently shutdown the computer from Windows.
Unfortunately, you also only have one option: Disable it.
To do so, go to Settings (or PC Settings if you're using Classic Shell), System, Power & Sleep, Additional Power settings, and click on "Choose what the power buttons do." (Optionally, if you have Classic Shell, you can skip most of these intermediate steps by clicking control panel and going straight into Power Options, then "Choose what the power buttons do"). From here, click the "Change settings that are currently unavailable," and uncheck "Turn on fast startup" under shutdown settings.
This will disable hybrid shutdown. It may also increase you boot times, but it's the only way to guarantee your Windows disks will be accessible from other operating systems, even if you've recently shutdown the computer from Windows.