Mount NTFS with read/write

[Tarrant64]

Summary of what I'm trying to do. 10gb and 80gb drive on linux box(Debian). Now, 10gb has OS and 80gb has a bunch of files from NTFS when windows was installed before(movies, wallpapers, pics, etc.). I left it in there and mounted it as NTFS.


It's only read-only right now. Understandable, i hear it's challenge for Linux to write to NTFS. That's not what I want to do though. I want to be able to mount it through Linux(samba), and share it to Windows machines where they can then read/write to the drive. HOW DO I DO THIS?

Been working on it all night, I think I'm gettin' close. Maybe someone here knows the quick/long way to do this?

TIA!

 

[Nothinman]

If the drive is locally in the Linux box you can't do that. You might be able to rig something, like maybe run Windows in VMWare and have it mount the raw partition and share it but I wouldn't trust that.

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: Tarrant64
Understandable, i hear it's challenge for Linux to write to NTFS. That's not what I want to do though.

Yes, that *is* what you are wanting to do.

 

[Tarrant64]

I suppose if I'm to learn how, that's what I need to do huh?

 

[xitshsif]

Shouldn't a FAT32 drive be used instead of an NTFS one to ensure trouble-free inter-OS file sharing?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: xitshsif
Shouldn't a FAT32 drive be used instead of an NTFS one to ensure trouble-free inter-OS file sharing?

Only if both OSes are local. Otherwise a decent filesystem should be used instead.

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: Tarrant64
I suppose if I'm to learn how, that's what I need to do huh?

Well, if you are wanting to use Samba to share an NTFS partition, then it will be Linux reading and writing from the partition... the client machines have absolutely nothing to do with this. It's pretty much a bad idea to continue to consider this.

I would back the data up somehow, format the partition as ext3, restore the data, and use Samba to share that out.

 

[xitshsif]

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: Tarrant64
I suppose if I'm to learn how, that's what I need to do huh?

Well, if you are wanting to use Samba to share an NTFS partition, then it will be Linux reading and writing from the partition... the client machines have absolutely nothing to do with this. It's pretty much a bad idea to continue to consider this.

I would back the data up somehow, format the partition as ext3, restore the data, and use Samba to share that out.

I have a Linux box running Debian, sharing a 250GB FAT32 drive using Samba. Would you recommend reformatting this ext3? The other computers on the LAN are all running XP. Can XP read ext3?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: xitshsif

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: Tarrant64
I suppose if I'm to learn how, that's what I need to do huh?

Well, if you are wanting to use Samba to share an NTFS partition, then it will be Linux reading and writing from the partition... the client machines have absolutely nothing to do with this. It's pretty much a bad idea to continue to consider this.

I would back the data up somehow, format the partition as ext3, restore the data, and use Samba to share that out.

I have a Linux box running Debian, sharing a 250GB FAT32 drive using Samba. Would you recommend reformatting this ext3? The other computers on the LAN are all running XP. Can XP read ext3?

XP cannot read ext3, but unless you're dualbooting it doesn't have to.

 

[xitshsif]

I'm trying to set up a share on my Linux box so that my XP machines can all access it. So wouldn't XP have to be able to read it?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: xitshsif
I'm trying to set up a share on my Linux box so that my XP machines can all access it. So wouldn't XP have to be able to read it?

XP cannot read ext3 file systems. If they're trying to access shares over a network, they aren't trying to read the fielsystem. ext3fs works fine for network shares.

 

[xitshsif]

My bad. I didn't realize that accessing a share over a network doesn't actually use the filesystem at all. But I guess the only way to learn this things is ask. Thanks

 

[Cerb]

You'll need to get Captive working to write to NTFS decently.

 

[Nothinman]

You'll need to get Captive working to write to NTFS decently.

And I've heard some bad things about Captive as well, I never looked into it though because I have no need for it.

 

[nweaver]

follow the backup/format to native supported fs/samba route. Samba is really easy once you get the basics down.

 

[Tarrant64]

So right now is it looking better for me to copy what's on the NTFS, format the drive as ext3, and then copy everything back? That would work better than ntfs?

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: Tarrant64
So right now is it looking better for me to copy what's on the NTFS, format the drive as ext3, and then copy everything back? That would work better than ntfs?

Correct. If it is going to be used on a linux machine, ext3 is definitely the way to go.

 

[Tarrant64]

Alright, today I was just about to go to that. Well, I got it to work without doing so.

What I ended up doing was editing the fstab in /etc/fstab
It's the filesystem table, correct? Anyways, I've been reading a huge linux book lately(on Fedora Core actually), and it mentioned that in there. Looked it up at some books at work in relations to Debian(since that's what I'm using). From what I understand taht's the script that when the system is booted it tells it what is to be automatically mounted and not mounted. cd-roms, dvd's, etc. Well, I added the ntfs drive to this.

/dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1 ntfs defaults, umask=000 0 0

This is the line I added to add it and after messing around with the samba config again(had to add a network drive for /mnt/hdb1). And BAM! started working. Can't believe after I thought about how to do it once I got it mounted took me a few days. Either way! Thanks for the help! I am still purchasing a much bigger hard drive this week(this one is 80gb and too small for all these movies/anime). I will be formatting that with ext3 and seeing how well that works.

Thanks again!

BTW, Debian 3.1 is out? probably old news. Anyways, mounting an NTFS drive for windows on linux does indeed work!

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: Tarrant64
Alright, today I was just about to go to that. Well, I got it to work without doing so.

What I ended up doing was editing the fstab in /etc/fstab
It's the filesystem table, correct? Anyways, I've been reading a huge linux book lately(on Fedora Core actually), and it mentioned that in there. Looked it up at some books at work in relations to Debian(since that's what I'm using). From what I understand taht's the script that when the system is booted it tells it what is to be automatically mounted and not mounted. cd-roms, dvd's, etc. Well, I added the ntfs drive to this.

/dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1 ntfs defaults, umask=000 0 0

This is the line I added to add it and after messing around with the samba config again(had to add a network drive for /mnt/hdb1). And BAM! started working. Can't believe after I thought about how to do it once I got it mounted took me a few days. Either way! Thanks for the help! I am still purchasing a much bigger hard drive this week(this one is 80gb and too small for all these movies/anime). I will be formatting that with ext3 and seeing how well that works.

Thanks again!

BTW, Debian 3.1 is out? probably old news. Anyways, mounting an NTFS drive for windows on linux does indeed work!

Well, good luck if you insist on using NTFS. I would not keep anything important on that partition. I've never tried r+w - I've only used read - but I have heard *only* bad things about r+w using NTFS under linux. My advice is to proceed with extreme caution.

 

[Tarrant64]

Of course. Thanks...