[SWLUG] NTFS and Linux

[Steve Anderson]

Davage, Marcus wrote:

> Hi all,

Hiya

> I've just bought a chunky new 160GB h/d for my home PC which has dual-boot
> Win98/Win2k/Mandrake 9.latest on it.

Surely you mean triple-boot? =)

> Before I partition and format it...
> 1. Can Linux read NTFS partitions? It would save a lot of trouble if it
> could!
> 2. Can I share a partition (RW, NTFS preferrably) between Linux and Win2K?

Well, I had no knowledge in this area until yesterday, when I had to 
gain access to an ill-colleague's password-protected Windows XP machine. 
I promptly downloaded a Linux boot-floppy 'thing' designed to access 
NTFS and change passwords and things, and it did the job fantastically. 
The password was changed, the files we needed were accessed and the day 
was saved.

However, in the documentation it warns that password-protected files and 
folders under NTFS aren't able to be accessed by Linux. At worst, they 
can be scrubbed, but generally they're just not usable. In a home 
environment this is probably not going to be an issue - like you're 
going to keep anything sensitive on an operating system that can be 
violated by a boot floppy! =)

Steve