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nickylim
Contributor
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UEFI DXE RW Driver for NTFS filesystem loads as read-only on Workstation Pro 15.5.7

Hi,

A somewhat related topic to this issue,I am trying to use the open-source NTFS RW DXE driver developed by pete batard (https://github.com/pbatard/ntfs-3g) but am stuck loading the driver as RW (read write0 as it falls back to RO (read only).

 

I am running UEFI shell in VMware® Workstation 15 Pro (15.5.7 build-17171714)

 

Shell> ver
EFI Specification Revision : 2.31
EFI Vendor                 : VMware, Inc.
EFI Revision               : 1.0
fs0:\> load ntfs_x64.efi
load: Image fs0:\ntfs_x64.efi loaded at E0C2000 - Success
fs0:\> map -u
[...snip...]
fs1    :Hard Disk - Alias hd11a3 blk2
[...snip...]
fs0:\> vol fs1
Volume has no label (ro)
[...snip...]
fs0:\> vol hd11a3
Volume has no label (ro)
[...snip...]
fs0:\> vol blk2
Volume has no label (ro)

 

 

Any help would be much appreciated! Thank you.

The original issue here: https://github.com/pbatard/ntfs-3g/issues/2

 

PS: Looping @dariusd because this challenge seems to be right up your alley 😅

 

EDIT:

After further testing, it seems that it works on a physical target if i ensure that the cycle power (ie, restart / shutdown) properly and not via Windows Fast Boot. Instructions here (https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/213195423-How-To-Disable-Fast-Startup-in-Windows-10) show an option to disable.

However, when I try to disable Fast Boot on a Windows VM, I do not see the option.

In conclusion, therefore, my hypothesis is that VMware's power management is implemented differently which results in this issue, as described by OP.

-----------------------------

Physical Workstation power menu

[ref: https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/213195423-How-To-Disable-Fast-Startup-in-Windows-10]

nickylim_1-1653556214225.png

VMware's VM power menu

image.png

 

 

 

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Charles69
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The purpose of this page is to provide Free Software UEFI components, such as a read-only NTFS, XFS or exFAT EFI drivers, or more exotic ones such as Amiga FFS/SFS, BFS, UFS, ZFS, courtesy of the GRUB project, as well as other goodies. MyMercy

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nickylim
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Hmm, there is a link to a RW version for NTFS though.

 

You can also find a read/write NTFS driver (based on ntfs-3g) HERE. (https://efi.akeo.ie/)

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dariusd
VMware Employee
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Sorry for the catastrophically delayed reply... I had kinda lost track of my Communities notifications. 😞

I have quickly tested with a Workstation 17.0.0 VM running a fresh install of Windows 10 Enterprise, and my VM can happily load the read-write NTFS driver from that page, and I can access the guest's NTFS volume in read-write mode – the "vol" command shows that it is "(rw)" and I can create files on that filesystem and read them back.

We have not made any changes to Workstation specifically to address the problem you report.  There really is not much we could do to influence the driver's behavior here other than through changes to the platform's power state support seen by the OS, and I can not immediately think of anything we have changed in that regard.

The "Fast Startup"/"Fast Boot" feature of Windows is dependent on the platform supporting the hibernate power-save mode, and VMware virtual machines do not support it, which is almost certainly why the option is not in the Windows user-interface... because Windows can not activate that feature in the virtual machine anyway.

If the problem is still occurring, it might be worth inspecting the Windows event logs to see what it is doing at OS shutdown/start, specifically to see if there are any clues about which power state it thinks it is going into, and to see whether there are any warnings from the OS NTFS driver during boot which might be linked to the EFI NTFS driver's inability to mount the volume read-write.  That's about all I can think of.

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