I Installed mate in a dual boot with Windows 11. In Mate, Caja will show two volumes I can peruse. One volume is the windows OS and the other is my windows drive D where all files that I work on are kept. When I first logged into Mate, I opened folders and mad a link to "my Files" (folder in D) onto the desktop. I had some glitchy stuff with ubuntu so I have reinstalled. Now that particular folder "My Files" is not visible in Mate. If I reboot into Windows, the folder is found on Drive D. Also, Mate kept putting a "broken link" to the folder, but the folder itself does not show up.
If I understand correctly, your "My Files" folder exists on the "drive D" partition, which can be seen in Windows but no longer shows up in Ubuntu? This sounds likely why the link on the desktop appears broken.
Should that be the case, I'd highly recommend getting Windows to check the disk, in case it's file system corruption. I ran into something weird last year with folders disappearing from an NTFS partition.
In Windows, you can right click the disk → Properties. Under "Tools" there is a "Check Now" button. Alternately, open cmd.exe to get a more detailed report:
chkdsk /F D:
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It might be the paragon driver again.
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checked the disk and no problems found.
I checked with ls -l /usr/sbin/mount.ntfs and shows ntsf being mounted with ntfs-3g. etc/fstab file doesn't show either ntfs-3g nor ntfs3g.
Once again, if I boot into windows then the folder shows, but in ubunut mate ai get this:
Maybe it shows under a different user name - it may have been that the system only opens you the current new username while the documents of the old username are not there - I can't remember exactly what to type in terminal but I recall I had that problem and my friend simply merged the folders from old username into new username folders
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Since I had this problem I have reformatted the linux partition and reinstalled mate. Why would it be looking for an old user name?
Since you've made it via first login I guess it is saved as a path file to an old account home directory - just my guess but I may be wrong
Ah, now I see.
You have the symlink on the NTFS drive. That won't work.
This is due to NTFS not supporting symlinks at all.
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I still don't understand. All the other folders show up in the window except for that one. Even if I delete the link. When I used Windows 10 and Mate 22:10 I no problem. I had a link on the desktop that would go to that NTSF folder.
Yes, if you have the link on the desktop it works, because the desktop is a folder on an ext4 partition.
But you have the link above not on the desktop but on the NTFS drive itself and that won't work.
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I think I will have to be finished with dual booting because trying to fix the linux side has messed with the windows ntfs drive where the folder is supposed to be. Now that fold is moved to trash. I had to search for it and thankfully found it. I also have it backed up. I enjoyed Mate for over two years with a dual boot to windows 10. But it was not this newer version of Mate.
I have deleted that link several times but it never stays deleted. So I thought I would uninstall Ubuntu and reinstall but it didn't help.
On this reddit forum thread you will see some solutions and also suggestions on how to maintain dual-booth without the issues that happened to you:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/comments/14j82cy/best_windows_and_linux_dualboot_setup/
One of the posts clearly states, and I quote: "As far as file transfer, while in Linux (ext4, typically) you can mount and copy to/from the Windows (NTFS) drive. You can't (or shouldn't try to) access you Linux drive from Windows. "
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I already understand that. I have dual booted for several years and I know you cannot access Linux drives from windows. However, I have never come up on the issue I am facing now. I just want to undo the link from Linux to the NTSF folder so I can see it once again on the NTSF drive. Nothing has given me the help so far.
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Well in that case I really don't know how to help you since you know more than I do about the dual-boot and its issues
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Just did I trial of Linux Mint and the folder showed up in the NTSF partition. Might have to try a new distro.
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In that case Linux Mint MATE may be the one that suits you since it has most of the same aspects of Ubuntu MATE - good luck in any case!
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Technically, it does! mklink command in Windows makes that possible. It can be read on the Linux side (for example, the legacy "Documents and Settings" folder is a link to "Users").
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Please could you right click → Open in Terminal from that folder. Run this:
ls -l
This will print the files and link destination ->. It might be because the link is pointing to a path that doesn't exist, possibly if it's mounted at a different endpoint. Cross-reference with:
mount | grep /media
That might explain why Linux Mint and the older Ubuntu MATE OS can see it and why it's a broken link here.
The solution in that case would be to update the link. A relative link (e.g. ../folder) instead of an absolute path (e.g. /media/rick6860/folder) would be much more reliable. The ln -s command can help here. Seeing where the link is supposed to go (and how it was created) will help me advise.
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