[Sussex] Newb Question - Reading NTFS filesystem

[Ronan Chilvers]

Hi Neil

On Thu, 24 Nov 2005 11:05:24 +0000
Neil Simmons <nasimmons at gmail.com> wrote:

> Google tells me that Linux can read NTFS. I'd like to be able to
> access it from Linux, so that I can play my mp3s in a decent OS, but
> at present, the filesystem doesn't see the drive at all.
> 

Officially NTFS is read-only for penguins.  Write support is available
but is not stable or safe at all.  Ubuntu for example sets up NTFS
partitions as read only on install.

> Please could someone offer some advice as to how I:
> 
>  - mount that hdd so that I can actually see it, and

Suprised your Ubuntu install didn't do this, but on my Hoary
workstation I have the following in /etc/fstab

/dev/hda1       /media/windows  auto    ro,users,noauto  0       0

That is, /dev/hda1 is my windows 2000 partition and the filesystem type
is automagically worked out by the kernel on mount.

>  - read (do I need to execute too?) the files in NTFS?

Once mounted, you can just open the filesystem directly in nautilus.
One strangeness is that I need to be root to read the filesystem which
is annoying, despite the 'users' parameter in the fstab line.  You
could replace the 'noauto' with 'auto' to get it mounted on boot.

> 
> Or should I just shift the data, reformat in FAT and start again?

FAT32 is well supported - I'd go for that.

Cheers

-- 
Ronan
e: ronan at thelittledot.com
t: 01903 739 997
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