NTFS File Deletion Error – Fixing ‘No Such File or Directory’ Message on NTFS

filesntfsrm

I have a directory with images. Suddenly I found out that there's a new image with a new name. The image content is similar to another image in another directory but with a different name. I didn't copy this image to this directory.

Also a directory with the same name as the image suddenly appeared there. I didn't create any of them. When I tried to delete them I got this message "No such file or directory" even though it already existed there. I used the command sudo rm -rf imagename.jpg to delete it but it didn't work.

Can anyone explain why this is happening and how to solve it?

The output of ls -l "large (2).jpg":

-rw------- 1 alaa alaa 2859942 Jun  8 04:01 large (2).jpg

The output of rm "large (2).jpg":

rm: cannot remove ‘large (2).jpg’: No such file or directory

The output of printf %s\\0\\n ./large* | sed -n l

./large (20).jpg\000$
./large (26).jpg\000$
./large (2).jpg\000$
./large (5).jpg\000$

The filesystem is NTFS.

Best Answer

I once posted a pretty in-depth look at NTFS file-streams as related to the linux ntfs-3g driver due to a similar issue on a different question. I remembered it, and - guessing that your problem was also on an NTFS partition - I posted this comment here:

If it's NTFS I suspect this. This can occur if a file's basic permissions are modified as you end up affecting the stream. I think that's what happens. It's complicated - and probably at least a little beyond me. But it happens. Anyway, run chkdsk in Windows.

Apparently, and happily, this has solved your issue.

Related Solutions

Merge two image folders

Since you are new to the command line I will go over the steps one by one, explaining each along the way.

When you open up a terminal/shell/command-line, you'll see a command-prompt like so:

username:~ $

or something similar. You'll almost certainly start out in your home directory, which has the name of your username.

Let's say your two image folders are folder1 and folder2. You said they are on the Desktop, so first we change to the Desktop directory:

cd Desktop

The cd command is the "change directory" command, doing exactly what it sounds like.

Now, we are going to use the mv command, which of course stands for "move".

mv -i folder1/* folder2/

I used the -i flag, which stands for "interactive", which causes a prompt to appear every time there is a file-name conflict. You'll be asked whether you want to overwrite the destination file or not.

After this, you'll have to manually resolve any conflicts* by renaming the files left in folder1 so they don't conflict with the files in folder2. Finally, run the above command again, but this time you should get no conflicts.

After all this, your folder1 directory should be empty, so go ahead and remove it with

rmdir folder1

and you're done!

I really recommend you go through a simple bash tutorial like this one to learn the basics.

Note that it is of course possible to resolve naming conflicts programmatically by renaming each of the files in folder1, but I tried to keep things simple.

NTFS – How to Delete a Corrupted File on an NTFS Partition

As far I know, currently there is no Linux tool for the fixing of ntfs partitions. ntfsfix is only a trick, it simply sets the partition as "clean", but it actually doesn't clean it.

Writing to a corrupted filesystem endangers the data on it, and we generally don't trust ntfs, thus we try to avoid the further data corruption, this is why this tool rather chooses to reject the deletion.

You need to use a different operating system to fix the partition. Ideally, to avoid rebooting your Linux, it is useful if you use some virtualization technology for that with direct partition access.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Merge two image folders

NTFS – How to Delete a Corrupted File on an NTFS Partition

Related Question