FileSystem > NTFS
NTFS (Windows NT FileSystem) is a proprietary filesystem, used as the default in every version of Microsoft Windows since NT 3.1. Accessing NTFS partitions is a common necessity in dual-boot setups, where exchanging files between drives is a need.
NTFS Drivers
Two NTFS filesystem drivers are currently available:
- Recommended driver, actively maintained and supported in Debian.
- Userspace NTFS driver via FUSE, provides read and write access.
Based on, and a major improvement to ntfsmount and libntfs.
Available in the ntfs-3g package.
- Included in the upstream kernel starting from version 2.6, provides read-only access and limited write support. Not actively developed.
Not currently built with Debian's kernel packages, "ntfs" has been symlinked to "ntfs-3g" as it relates to fstab and mount commands.
Obsolete
Requires Wine and the Microsoft Windows ntfs.sys driver.
No longer maintained and not recommended for use.
Usage Examples
mount
ntfs-3g (man page):
# mkdir /mnt/windows # mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows
/etc/fstab
ntfs and ntfs-3g
The original tool used to mount ntfs partitions was /sbin/mount.ntfs. However, in Debian Squeeze this is symlink-ed to /sbin/mount.ntfs-3g, which is in turn symlink-ed to /usr/bin/ntfs-3g. So an entry in /etc/fstab that mounts an NTFS partition can specify either ntfs or ntfs-3g as its filesystem type, and both of these specifications will use the new NTFS filesystem driver ntfs-3g to mount the partition. ntfs-3g might be the preferred choice as it provides both read and write access to NTFS partitions.
Permissions for mounted partition(s)
For filesystem access by other users and groups on the system, refer to the mount(8) and fstab(5) man pages; note the umask, dmask, fmask, uid and gid options.
ntfs (man page):
/dev/sda1 /mnt/windows ntfs ro,user,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=0222,fmask=0333 0 0
ntfs-3g (man page):
/dev/sda1 /mnt/windows ntfs-3g rw,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=0002,fmask=0003 0 0
External Links
http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ - NTFS-3G homepage;
http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-faq/#unprivileged - "Why can't unprivileged users mount block devices?" (NTFS-3G Support: Questions & Answers)
http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/ - Captive NTFS homepage
CategoryStorage | CategorySystemAdministration | CategoryProprietarySoftware