Linux - dual-boot: full access to W10 files from Linux

[last updated: 2019-10-19]
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On my dual-boot Dell tower, when booting into Linux, files on the HD on the Windows partition are opened read-only so cannot be edited.


To fix this:

• Perform a full Windows shutdown:
• Windows normally shuts down with "hibernation", which allows a quicker boot next time it's started.
  However this prevents Linux from mounting the Windows partition with full read and write access.
• To fix this, when you shut down Windows, you must do a "full shutdown", ie. without hibernation:
  press and hold the Shift key while you press the Shut down button on Windows.
• Alternatively:
  With Windows running, do a Restart, and when the Grep menu appears, select Linux.
• In both the full shutdown and restart cases, Windows won't hibernate, so you'll be able to access the Windows drive with read/write access in Linux.
• You need to do this every time you want full access to the Windows partition from Linux.
• A permanent fix:
  Disable the Windows 10 fast startup option:
• Note that disabling the Windows fast startup option will slow down Windows OS boot.
• To disable fast startup in Windows 10:
  Control Panel > Power Options
  "Choose what the power buttons do" (left sidebar)
  "Change settings that are currently unavailable"
  under "Shutdown settings", un-check "Turn on fast startup"
  click "Save changes"
  close Power Options window
• If you did this but the Windows partition is still mounted as read-only in Linux, or you can't access it at all, the problem might be:
  Some Windows update (this seems to especially happen with Windows 10) might have re-enabled the fast startup option, so you'll need to disable it again.
  In some cases the hibernation file might be created before turning off the fast startup option, so the hibernation file is never destroyed. In this case, turn on the fast startup option, reboot Windows and turn off fast startup again.
• There is also a third option - the ntfsfix command (part of the ntfs-3g package), which repairs some NTFS inconsistencies, resets the NTFS journal file and schedules a NTFS consistency check for the first boot into Windows.
  This might corrupt your Windows installation though, so it's not recommended, that's why I I didn't add it as an option.
  But this is worth a mention because it can be useful in some cases. For example, if you no longer have Windows 10 or 8 installed, but a NTFS partition was left in a hibernated state. In such cases, you could use sudo ntfsfix /dev/NTFS_partition (for example /dev/sdb1) to get the partition to mount with full read/write access.

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