mounting NTFS drives in ubuntu

[minofifa]

Hello

Well ihave been doing some more reading on how to mount and unmount NTFS drives in linux and i came across this. It seems pretty simple, but one thing that concerns me is that it lets users have read-only access. I use my NTFS SATA drves to store my music and videos and projects so i would need to write to them. How can i do that?

Q: How to mount Windows partitions (NTFS) on boot-up, and allow all users to read only?

Read General Notes
Read How to list partition tables?
e.g. Assumed that /dev/hda1 is the location of Windows partition (NTFS)
Local mount folder: /media/windowssudo mkdir /media/windows

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_backup
sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Append the following line at the end of file
/dev/hda1 /media/windows ntfs nls=utf8,umask=022200

Save the edited file (sample)

 

[BlueWeasel]

Generally, writing to NTFS mounts is not recommended in Linux. I've never tried it, but the results could be bad.

You might check out Captive, though.
http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/

 

[minofifa]

hmmm well that kindof sucks. it really is almost impossible to have a fully functional winXP/linux dual boot setup, since most winxp users use NTFS formatting. That captive software seems pretty neat though. would anybody recommend/not recommend using it?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Use ext3 drivers for Windows.

EDIT: Maybe it's only ext2fs.

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Use ext3 drivers for Windows.

EDIT: Maybe it's only ext2fs.

Yeah... I believe that the program's name is ext2fs, but it's able to read ext3. I'm not sure if it's able to do journalling, though... I don't believe that it is, so you might have an issue on reboot of the linux OS... though I doubt it. I've been using it for compatibility on my machine (have a couple of ext3 partitions), and it seems to be working OK for me.

Keep in mind that there is no security whatsoever on that drive, though, while in windows. That means *be careful*, because you're able to access all kinds of system files that you really shouldn't play with unless you know a lot about linux.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Use ext3 drivers for Windows.

EDIT: Maybe it's only ext2fs.

Yeah... I believe that the program's name is ext2fs, but it's able to read ext3. I'm not sure if it's able to do journalling, though... I don't believe that it is, so you might have an issue on reboot of the linux OS... though I doubt it. I've been using it for compatibility on my machine (have a couple of ext3 partitions), and it seems to be working OK for me.

Keep in mind that there is no security whatsoever on that drive, though, while in windows. That means *be careful*, because you're able to access all kinds of system files that you really shouldn't play with unless you know a lot about linux.

ext3fs - journalling = ext2fs

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Use ext3 drivers for Windows.

EDIT: Maybe it's only ext2fs.

Yeah... I believe that the program's name is ext2fs, but it's able to read ext3. I'm not sure if it's able to do journalling, though... I don't believe that it is, so you might have an issue on reboot of the linux OS... though I doubt it. I've been using it for compatibility on my machine (have a couple of ext3 partitions), and it seems to be working OK for me.

Keep in mind that there is no security whatsoever on that drive, though, while in windows. That means *be careful*, because you're able to access all kinds of system files that you really shouldn't play with unless you know a lot about linux.

ext3fs - journalling = ext2fs

Yeah... I knew that... but since I'm not terribly familiar with the way journalling works <hangs head in shame>, I wasn't sure if accessing a filesystem that normally uses journalling with a program that is not capabile of journalling would cause any issues. I know it hasn't for me, but that doesn't mean much lately.

 

[drag]

Journalling basicly means that the file system keeps a record of files and directories being made or deleted or resized or whatnot.

That way if it crashes or something like that then the OS knows what part of the filesystem is likely corrupted or what parts to ignore or whatnot.

I varies quite a bit from filesystem to filesystem.

Ext3 is a newer version of Ext2, which includes journalling features among other things.. but it's backward compatable or something like that. Basicly it functions perfectly well as Ext2 minus the improvements and new features that only ext3 has.

Usually it's quite easy and safe to mount NTFS partitions read-only. As long as your Linux isn't allowed to write to it then that pretty much eliminates the chances of damaging it.

Other popular alternatives include setting up a simple file server on your network or setting up a simple fat32 partition that you can use to move files to and from Linux and Windows.

I prefer a file server myself. Usually using a old computer you stick a few disks in it. Anything above a 233 or so would be plenty fast for a normal network, although you'd probably want gigabyte access. If you get 3 or more disks it's not that difficult to setup a software RAID 5 array in linux for some extra failover protection. Put a firewall on it, put a UPS on that, and keep it up to date and most of your data will be safe from any disasters that may happen on your desktop (viruses, overclocking, fires, spilled mountain dew, etc etc)

 

[rmrf]

^^ iirc, any writes to a journaled drive while not booted will force a fsck to take place on boot up. I only had this happen a few times though, so it's possible it was just coincidence.

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: rmrf
^^ iirc, any writes to a journaled drive while not booted will force a fsck to take place on boot up. I only had this happen a few times though, so it's possible it was just coincidence.

I initially thought that, as I saw it mentioned somewhere else, but I've been reading and writing to an ext3fs partition from within Windows (without journalling), and I booted into linux an hour or two ago, and no fsck was run. :-\

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: drag
I prefer a file server myself. Usually using a old computer you stick a few disks in it. Anything above a 233 or so would be plenty fast for a normal network, although you'd probably want gigabyte access. If you get 3 or more disks it's not that difficult to setup a software RAID 5 array in linux for some extra failover protection. Put a firewall on it, put a UPS on that, and keep it up to date and most of your data will be safe from any disasters that may happen on your desktop (viruses, overclocking, fires, spilled mountain dew, etc etc)

That's my favorite solution too... unfortunately, not all of us have access to extra machines that are able to act as file servers.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: rmrf
^^ iirc, any writes to a journaled drive while not booted will force a fsck to take place on boot up. I only had this happen a few times though, so it's possible it was just coincidence.

I initially thought that, as I saw it mentioned somewhere else, but I've been reading and writing to an ext3fs partition from within Windows (without journalling), and I booted into linux an hour or two ago, and no fsck was run. :-\

Interesting. I believe the journal should have been corrupted. Maybe your distro deals with that well...

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: rmrf
^^ iirc, any writes to a journaled drive while not booted will force a fsck to take place on boot up. I only had this happen a few times though, so it's possible it was just coincidence.

I initially thought that, as I saw it mentioned somewhere else, but I've been reading and writing to an ext3fs partition from within Windows (without journalling), and I booted into linux an hour or two ago, and no fsck was run. :-\

Interesting. I believe the journal should have been corrupted. Maybe your distro deals with that well...

I'm using the latest Ubuntu release.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I've written to the partition since I had entered Ubuntu last or not. I know I've written to it previously, but maybe I hadn't most recently... I'm definitely going to have to try it and find out, here in a few minutes.

<edit> Just wrote a PDF to a directory on an ext3fs partition, and then restarted into Ubuntu. While it was loading, it said "checking root file system... clean" (was more verbose, but that's the gist of it...). It did not run fsck (at least as far as I could tell... doesn't fsck take a while, and force the partition to mount as read-only while it's running? It's been forever since I've used it or seen it run.), and the file was indeed on the partition where I placed it. :-\