I/O Errors and Mount Failure on Microsoft LDM (Dynamic) HDD

unnatural · March 24, 2026, 8:17pm

Hi! Three days ago I installed Tumbleweed on my primary ssd, replacing Windows 10. I am unable to mount my secondary NTFS partition on hdd. Didin’t write it during intallation. The hdd is configured as a LDM. While the drive is detected, the filesystem remains inaccessible. sudo mount -t ntfs -o ro /dev/sdb ~/mnt/ returns NTFS signature is missing.
Is there any way to “force” an LDM mapping to attempt a read-only mount?
Here’s sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb for more insight:

smartctl 7.5 2025-04-30 r5714 [x86_64-linux-6.19.8-1-default] (SUSE RPM)
Copyright (C) 2002-25, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Blue (CMR)
Device Model:     WDC WD10EZEX-00BN5A0
Serial Number:    WD-WCC3F2SV4EA4
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2b791adc6
Firmware Version: 01.01A01
User Capacity:    1 000 204 886 016 bytes [1,00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    7200 rpm
Device is:        In smartctl database 7.5/5894
ATA Version is:   ACS-2, ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 3b
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Tue Mar 24 21:06:19 2026 CET
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
                                        was completed without error.
                                        Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      ( 121) The previous self-test completed having
                                        the read element of the test failed.
Total time to complete Offline  
data collection:                (10800) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                        Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                                        Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                        command.
                                        Offline surface scan supported.
                                        Self-test supported.
                                        Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                        Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                        power-saving mode.
                                        Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                        General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine  
recommended polling time:        (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        ( 113) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities:              (0x3035) SCT Status supported.
                                        SCT Feature Control supported.
                                        SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   199   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       18751
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   174   169   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       2275
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       4493
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       2
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   077   077   000    Old_age   Always       -       16911
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       4491
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       43
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   199   199   000    Old_age   Always       -       4449
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   112   093   000    Old_age   Always       -       31
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   198   198   000    Old_age   Always       -       2
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       14
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Short offline       Completed: read failure       90%     16908         34

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

The above only provides legacy SMART information - try 'smartctl -x' for more

gogalthorp · March 25, 2026, 12:06pm

LDM is a proprietary MS file system. AFAIK there are no open source drivers for it.

knurpht · March 25, 2026, 1:01pm

You are trying to use a blacklisted filesystem. What you can do is
sudo modprobe ntfs and answer yes on the ublacklisting question. Or
sudo modprobe ntfs3 and answer the same.

unnatural · April 1, 2026, 4:27am

This doesn’t seem to work. Despite thank you for your answer

marel · April 1, 2026, 6:00am

But, no, there is no ldmtool for openSUSE.

malcolmlewis · April 1, 2026, 12:54pm

@unnatural Hi and welcome to the Forum
You can always build the tool from source?
https://github.com/mdbooth/libldm

malcolmlewis · April 2, 2026, 1:02am

@unnatural https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:malcolmlewis:TESTING/libldm

exception · April 2, 2026, 1:25am

according to the link it should be available in openSUSE
https://software.opensuse.org/package/ldmtool

try sudo zypper in ldmtool

malcolmlewis · April 2, 2026, 1:36am

@exception good spotting…

exception · April 2, 2026, 1:38am

after installing it read this wiki on how to use
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dynamic_disks
https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man1/ldmtool.1.html

unnatural · April 11, 2026, 9:43am

Tried using ldmtool but it fails to acces my HDD.

~>sudo ldmtool scan /dev/sdb 
Error scanning /dev/sdb: Error reading from /dev/sdb: Input/output error
~>ls /dev/mapper/
control

marel · April 12, 2026, 9:47am

One question, based on the documents, i.e. use with cation:

Did you run ldmtool create all before ldmtool scan?

The link I shared earlier has quite some good but in-depth debug instructions.

unnatural · April 12, 2026, 5:44pm

Yes, I did. I just haven’t copied it to the reply. Sorry about that