NTFS [Was: [Westwales] Over Secure?]

[John Bailey]

> SuSe won't write to NTFS?

I'm running 2.6.8 at home, and this is from the kernel config for the 
write option for NTFS:

    This enables the partial, but safe, write support in the NTFS driver.

    The only supported operation is overwriting existing files, without
    changing the file length.  No file or directory creation, deletion or
    renaming is possible.  Note only non-resident files can be written to
    so you may find that some very small files (<500 bytes or so) cannot
    be written to.

    While we cannot guarantee that it will not damage any data, we have
    so far not received a single report where the driver would have
    damaged someones data so we assume it is perfectly safe to use.

I believe that SuSE current will ship with a more recent version, but I'd 
be surprised if the situation had changed radically. The latest status on 
the Linux-NTFS (the NTFS driver that I believe is in the kernel) website 
<http://www.linux-ntfs.org> supports this:

    Still read-only, but with safe file overwrite support on all Windows
    versions without changes to the file size

Novell's admin guides for SuSE 9.3 
<www.novell.com/documentation/suse93/suselinux-adminguide/html/apas03.html> 
and 10.0 
<www.novell.com/documentation/suse10/suselinux-adminguide/html/apas03.html> 
both list NTFS as supported read-only.

There are a couple of 3rd party solutions like the one from Paragon which 
claim to be able to be able to write NTFS in a stable manner.

John