Pop_OS says "Folder Empty" but files visible in Windows

[wolfmanyoda]

I've been happily using Pop_OS for the last year. I have three hard drives for data, besides my two system drives for Pop_OS and Windows. I access all three drives from both OS's, but I hardly ever use Windows anymore.

One drive is called Pictures, and it contains several folders that I can still access in linux, but the main folder I use, also called Pictures, now says "Folder is Empty" when I navigate to it. I rebooted into Windows earlier in the day(to use the Cricut machine) and my daughter wanted to look at some old photos. I let her browse through Picasa in Windows, she had fun, I rebooted to linux.

Now I can't see my pictures. I rebooted again to windows and confirmed the files and folders are still on the drive and accessible from there. Jump back into linux, still says "Folder is Empty". I'm fairly confident windows did something to the permissions, but I haven't taken the deep dive yet in linux to really understand how to check that and fix it.

I did snag some system info to share:

System:
Kernel: 6.9.3-76060903-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A
Desktop: GNOME 42.9 Distro: Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS base: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy
Machine:
Type: Desktop System: Gigabyte product: X570 AORUS ELITE WIFI v: -CF
serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Gigabyte model: X570 AORUS ELITE WIFI v: x.x
serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: F35
date: 07/08/2021
CPU:
Info: 8-core model: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen 3
rev: 2 cache: L1: 512 KiB L2: 4 MiB L3: 96 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 2317 high: 3400 min/max: 2200/3400 boost: enabled
cores: 1: 2200 2: 2200 3: 2200 4: 2200 5: 2200 6: 2200 7: 2200 8: 2200
9: 2200 10: 2200 11: 2200 12: 2882 13: 3400 14: 2200 15: 2200 16: 2200
bogomips: 108798
Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
Graphics:
Device-1: NVIDIA GA104 [GeForce RTX 3060] vendor: Micro-Star MSI
driver: nvidia v: 550.67 bus-ID: 09:00.0
Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.4 driver: X: loaded: nouveau
unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa failed: nvidia gpu: nvidia resolution:
1: 1920x1080~60Hz 2: 1920x1080~60Hz 3: 1920x1080~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060/PCIe/SSE2
v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 550.67 direct render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: NVIDIA GA104 High Definition Audio vendor: Micro-Star MSI
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 09:00.1
Device-2: AMD Starship/Matisse HD Audio vendor: Gigabyte
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 0b:00.4
Device-3: Texas Instruments PCM2902 Audio Codec type: USB
driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid bus-ID: 1-2:2
Device-4: Razer USA USB Sound Card type: USB
driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid bus-ID: 3-4:3
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k6.9.3-76060903-generic running: yes
Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.99.1 running: no
Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 1.0.3 running: yes
Network:
Device-1: Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168NGW [Stone Peak] driver: iwlwifi
v: kernel bus-ID: 04:00.0
IF: wlp4s0 state: down mac: <filter>
Device-2: Intel I211 Gigabit Network vendor: Gigabyte driver: igb
v: kernel port: f000 bus-ID: 05:00.0
IF: enp5s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
Device-1: Intel Wireless-AC 3168 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8
bus-ID: 3-5:4
Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: <filter>
bt-v: 2.1 lmp-v: 4.2
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 21.83 TiB used: 4.9 TiB (22.4%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Western Digital model: WD BLACK SN850X 4000GB
size: 3.64 TiB temp: 40.9 C
ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WD6003FZBX-00K5WB0
size: 5.46 TiB
ID-3: /dev/sdb vendor: Seagate model: ST8000DM004-2U9188 size: 7.28 TiB
ID-4: /dev/sdc vendor: Western Digital model: WD6003FZBX-00K5WB0
size: 5.46 TiB
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 5.41 TiB used: 591.66 GiB (10.7%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3
ID-2: /boot/efi size: 1020 MiB used: 352.3 MiB (34.5%) fs: vfat
dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 4 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/dm-0
mapped: cryptswap
ID-2: swap-2 type: zram size: 16 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/zram0
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 38.0 C mobo: 28.0 C gpu: nvidia temp: 44 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: nvidia fan: 0%
Info:
Processes: 388 Uptime: 45m Memory: 62.74 GiB used: 7.81 GiB (12.4%)
Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 11.4.0 Packages: 2554 Shell: Bash
v: 5.1.16 inxi: 3.3.13

I'll attach a couple of screenshots showing the Pictures folder, along with some others on the Pictures drive, and a shot of the open Pictures folder.
All of the other folders inside the Pictures hard drive are still accessible in lilnux, it's just the Pictures folder giving my problems today.

Any suggestions are super appreciated, thanks!

 

[wizardfromoz]

G'day @wolfmanyoda and welcome to inux.org

Someone else may have better ideas but I'll ask a couple of questions to help them help you.

1. Which version of Windows?
2. Can you give us the path details for the Linux pictures folders eg /home/your-username/Pictures or other?
3. Can you go into your BIOS utility and check to see if Windows Fast Start is enabled, and if so disable it?

There will likely be questions from others.

Cheers

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

 

[Brickwizard]

I hardly ever use Windows anymore.

There could be one or more problems,
when you run windows, it will try to take back control of your machine. This predominantly happens when it installs updates, windows is known to reinitiate both windows quick-start and secure boot, if Linux won't boot then you may need to reinstall grub.
If you can boot Linux normally then you could look for pictures by locating the drive, right click and mount, then right click and open with , select other than use picture viewer [or your favourite viewing app]

another possibility [I had this myself a long time back] was Picasa changing the file format, probably my own fault for not watching what I was doing

 

[wolfmanyoda]

1. Which version of Windows?
2. Can you give us the path details for the Linux pictures folders eg /home/your-username/Pictures or other?
3. Can you go into your BIOS utility and check to see if Windows Fast Start is enabled, and if so disable it?

1. Windows 10
2. /media/my username/Pictures/pictures
3. Fast start is disabled

To make things more weird, this morning I was able to access 1 folder in the pictures folder. Then I went into BIOS to check Fast Start and when I booted back into linux the pictures folder was once again "empty".

 

[Brickwizard]

To make things more weird,

This may be a coincidence but your problems are also typical of a failing drive. Have you checked the health of that hard-drive [or all of them, as they are old plate spinners] using smartctl?

 

[wolfmanyoda]

I have not checked the health yet, but I had the same thought. I'm currently backing that drive up to an external drive and then I will scan.
Thanks!

 

[kc1di]

Hello @wolfmanyoda
Welcome to the Linux.org forum, Can't be of much help with your problem, but enjoy the forum.
It may be a formatting error. But check the disc first. What is the format of that drive?

 

[wolfmanyoda]

What is the format of that drive?

NTFS.