[Techtalk] writing to ntfs?

[Tracey Clark]

Cass wrote thusly:
> I had to reinstall windows XP and it's now ntfs rather than vfat. I
> saved some files on my linux partition, but it won't let me write to
> the windows partition anymore. I'm kinda new at this, can anyone help?!

Prior to the 2.6 kernel, the 2.4 kernel had the ability to write to NTFS
in *theory*. However, it was labeled experimental and was very unstable
(as in, you could lose lots of data). In the current 2.6 kernel, there is
an option listed for "safe" writing to ntfs, which is limited. I believe
this is based on the work of the Linux-NTFS that Rasjid sent a link for.

>From what I read on the Captive website, it looks pretty spiffy. If I
have some time (hahahah) I would like to test it out, since I have a
dual-boot box with Gentoo & Win2k.

In response to Rasjid:
"But in 99% of the cases where
someone is going to use it, they _will_ already have Windows installed on
the same system, and so the licensing issue is not really a huge problem.
 (Why else would you have an NTFS partition around?)"

Unfortunately, there are people who will burn copies of legal or
illegally cracked versions of Windows for other people. There are
countries where there is no such thing as copyright and so copying
software is more common, and there are websites with software from those
countries (Russia is an example). So, there are various ways to have an
NTFS partition lying around from an unlicensed version of Windows. In the
US (I can't speak for how it works in other countries), you need to pay
for a license for Windows per their licensing agreement to use it
legally.

Back to Linux and on-topic, to read ex2 and ex3 partitions from Windows
there is a utility called Explore2fs
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm

There is also Ext2fsnt which "is a Linux Ext2 filesystem driver for
Windows NT/2K/XP." http://ashedel.chat.ru/ext2fsnt/

These only work with ext2 and ext3.

-- 
Tracey


Linux Counter #264789

"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely
unintentional side effect." - Linus Torvalds, New York Times, 28 Sept 03