Linux read/write access to NTFS partition

[Constantine Evans]

David B Teague wrote:
> If I understand this article correctly:
> 
>     http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Linux-NTFS_Status
> 
> there is a new NTFS Kernel driver for kernels  2.5.11 and
> later that supports reading and writing to NTFS partitions.
>
> <http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Linux-NTFS_Status>Does Ubuntu have 
> this kernel? If not, what plans to include
> this kernel are there?

You would be better informed by reading tracts less ancient than that,
which was written in the far off year of 2005. There are no plans to
include this kernel because there are newer, and most likely better,
methods of mounting ntfs rw in Linux. ntfs-3g (ntfs-3g.org) is the one
that is probably the most used among Ubuntu users. While it is still
somewhat experimental, it seems to be much more stable than solutions
that have been around for much longer.

The specification at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WriteSupportForNTFS gives
more detail on the current solutions that are available, and
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=217009 seems, from my cursory
reading, to be a partially reasonable guide. However, one should always
be careful when adding random sources to one's sources.list, lest one
suffer the fate of the Treviño list users, or lose one's installation to
an unstable package. In particular, if you are running Edgy, you should
not need to add any extra sources. Just install ntfs-3g, and use the
ntfs-3g to mount the devices.

> Is it true that reading from NTFS partitions could cause
> corruption of the partition?

I remember a time when this used to happen reliably. The write support
in the default kernel was horrible in this respect - it was nearly
guaranteed to corrupt the partition when writes outside of very narrow
guidelines were made, though the partition was always recoverable in my
experience. I have not had any problems with ntfs-3g, however, and have
used it for a while.

You might also be quite interested in Ext2 IFS, located at
http://fs-driver.org, that allows Windows to access Ext2 drives. I have
used this heavily, actually keeping half of my Windows applications
(non-trivial programs as well, such as Photoshop CS2), and all of my
documents, on an ext3 partition. While this occasionally necessitates
that Ubuntu fsck the drives (as they are being mounted as ext2, which
increases the counter), I have never had any corruption caused by the
drivers.

Yours sincerely,
Constantine Evans