[H-GEN] mounting local NTFS partitions

[Russell Stuart]

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On Mon, 2003-10-06 at 20:26, Sandra Milne wrote:
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> I've been asked a few times about mounting NTFS partitions under linux. 
> I know it's possible, but I've always shied away from it if I could.
> 
> I'd like to hear people's opinions/experiences on mounting NTFS 
> partitions under linux, either read-only or with write access. I'm 
> curious as to whether it is safe as I have a couple of partitions that I 
> need the 4gig barrier gone on so they've been formatted NTFS. (Video 
> capture and DVD image compilation being the main reasons for this.) I 
> also have a number of friends who would probably install linux if they 
> could get at their windows partitions (mostly NTFS) from linux.

It works as documented.  Read only works well.  Read/Write will
eventually corrupt or destroy your drive if you try to change the space
allocated to a file or directory.

> I may consider turning a partition or 2 back to FAT32 if mounting NTFS 
> partitions is as dangerous as I've heard in the past, however I find 
> that the slack space in FAT32 partitions is somewhat ludicrous on large 
> partitions and there is no reliable way to mount ext2 partitions in 
> windows (that I've been able to find anyway). Explore2fs is a great free 
> program, however it can only allow browsing and copying of files, not a 
> full mounting of the partition.

Ext2fsnt (http://www.chat.ru/~ashedel/ext2fsnt/) will allow you to mount
a ext2 file system under Windows.  Last time I tried it (3-4 years ago)
it worked about as well as NTFS under Linux, ie - I wouldn't use it to
modify a drive.

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