Using NTFS

[theniteowl]

Hi All,
I am setting up a new machine dual booting with XP and Ubuntu with the intention of eventually migrating everything over to Linux. I am just learning Linux as I go so it will take time to transition.

I have several hard drives with large amounts of data that I would like to make available on the Linux machine. The drives are currently formatted NTFS.

Is there an easy way to make these drives available under Linux without backing up and reformatting them? Is it reliable?

I am also setting up a new 500Gig SATA drive. Should I format the drive under Linux first and then set it up for access under XP? Any issues I should be aware of?

Thanks.

At my age I still learn something new every day, but I forget two others.

 

[dragonforce]

Your NTFS drives should be mountable on your linux distro. Open up a console in your linux and type "man mount". This is a manual page which will describe how to use this function. Usually something like "mount -t NTFS /dev/hda3 /mnt/hda3". I cant remember off hand now; Im at work. For your SaTa drive rather set it up under XP and then access it from linux; XP doesnt support linux filesystems.

/*******************************

DragonForce
-Is it wrong to be strong
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[pansophic]

NTFS read on Linux has been very reliable for many years. There are ways to have an NTFS drive writable under Linux and they are now reliable also.

But if you are simply trying to learn Linux, you may be better off downloading a VMWare appliance that is a Linux distro and the free VMWare player. Then you can play without the need to reboot, and you can use Samba (or maybe a VMWare share) to access your Windows partition.

http://www.visoracle.com/download/debian/

http://tlug.dnho.net/?q=node/245

http://old.instantiations.com/VAST/files/Goodies-Community/Goodies-VaStUbuntuVmwareAppliance750.htm

pansophic

 

[dragonforce]

If you just want to try linux before jumping in with all the installation bit; download yourself a copy of the greatest live cd ever. Knoppix v5 or Knoppix STD(security tools distro). Then you can even remaster it but thats a whole different thread all together.

/*******************************

DragonForce
-Is it wrong to be strong
*******************************/

 

[roycrom]

http://www.ntfs-3g.org/

Full read write support for NTFS. I use it, it seems pretty solid to me, been using for a few months with no problems.

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Somethings come from nothing, nothing seems to come from somethings - SFA - Guerilla

roycrom