Ubuntu – Windows won’t recognize formatted partition on Ubuntu (FAT32 and NTFS)

fat32ntfspartitioningwindows

I'm using a USB drive of 128GB on which I installed Ubuntu 16, I'm using this drive to run Ubuntu alongside Windows. This works fine, except for one thing; I can't see the FAT32 partition in Windows which I created via Ubuntu. It is partition /dev/sdb3:

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
 /dev/sdb1              32 156250031 156250000 74.5G 83 Linux
 /dev/sdb2       156250112 187500543  31250432 14.9G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
 **/dev/sdb3       187500544 242614271  55113728 26.3G  b W95 FAT32**

But what I would like to have is a partition on the USB drive that both Windows and Ubuntu can work with. For that goal I created the partition '/dev/sdb3' as you can see in the above output of 'fdisk -l'. Unfortunately, that partition cannot be seen in Windows. It sees the drive as a RAW partition, as you can see in this picture (see partition E:).

screenshot

What I tried is formatting the drive in Windows, but that also formats the other partitions.

Does anybody know how this can happen? And what can I do to have a partition that can be seen in Windows and Ubuntu?

Best Answer

This is a Windows issue, not an Ubuntu one. Nevertheless the reason is simple: Windows cannot see past the first partition on USB drives.

Here's how to do it correctly:

  • backup the drive and erase it
  • create a first partition (it doesn't need to be "on the left" of the drive, it just needs to be the first you create)
  • format it as exFAT, NTFS or other convenient file system
  • add the other Linux-only partitions

In this way, you get an advantage: Windows won't see the Linux partitions at all. I did this on a live USB key that needed a Windows part and it worked perfectly.

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