I have just installed Suse 11 this week, and am an Open Suse newbie. At first, my NTFS partition was listed by Yast as Windows/C and something like 20 MB. It is an 18 GB partition, but had Boot and Grub installed in that small section, perhaps from Windows XP originally being on this partition.
I read the post about ntfs-3g being installed by default and edited etc/fstab. It only had the small portion mounted as /dev/disk/by-id … -part3 /windows/C vfat …
I changed the “vfat” to “ntfs-3g”. The user,gid, etc were the same as recommended, so I did not change them
Now, Yast shows this partition as 18 GB, but still as vfat instead of ntfs. I suspect that this mount condition comes from Boot or Grub, but have no idea where to look.
Maybe I’m insane, but are you sure your windows partition is ntfs? I
don’t think ‘vfat’ will work with NTFS (even read-only) and would be
surprised if that was wrong. Can you get the following output run as
‘root’:
fstab -l
Good luck.
jr4902 wrote:
> I have just installed Suse 11 this week, and am an Open Suse newbie. At
> first, my NTFS partition was listed by Yast as Windows/C and something
> like 20 MB. It is an 18 GB partition, but had Boot and Grub installed in
> that small section, perhaps from Windows XP originally being on this
> partition.
>
> I read the post about ntfs-3g being installed by default and edited
> etc/fstab. It only had the small portion mounted as /dev/disk/by-id …
> -part3 /windows/C vfat …
> I changed the “vfat” to “ntfs-3g”. The user,gid, etc were the same as
> recommended, so I did not change them
>
> Now, Yast shows this partition as 18 GB, but still as vfat instead of
> ntfs. I suspect that this mount condition comes from Boot or Grub, but
> have no idea where to look.
>
> I appreciate any suggestions.
>
>
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I no longer have a windows OS (I installed OpenSuse where Windows XP used to be), but do still have this one partition with Windows files. I have no idea where vfat comes from; I assumed it was a carry over from the windows partition.
P.S. I typed “fstab -l” and “/etc/fstab -l” but received “command not known”. Are you using something other than a small l?
I just remembered this from a previous post I read:
fdisk -l:
Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4863 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x77d821bb
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2 853 6843690 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda2 854 2422 12602992+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 * 2423 4862 19599300 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 2 853 6843658+ 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdb: 10.8 GB, 10800857088 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1313 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xfb00fb00
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 973 7815591 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 974 1313 2731050 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 974 1213 1927768+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6 1214 1313 803218+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
When I installed Windows XP on this drive about 4 years ago, I split the drive into 2 partitions, each about 20 GB. The first partition had Windows XP and all software applications; the other partition (now showing as vfat and/or ntfs) has everything else - a mix of pictures, music files and MS Word files, but in separate directories. This partition has not been changed during those 4 years. (The other one has been re-formatted a few times because Windows Registry was cluttered, or had a virus; then I switched to Xubuntu for a few months, and now to OpenSuse).
OK I suppose you can still access the puzzling partition as a drive in windows xp. What does windows think it is at this time in: drive icon → R-click → properties → filesystem (ntfs or fat32)?
I no longer have Windows installed, so I tried using the Windows XP install CD which showed it as Fat.
That would have been a good time to quit, but I went one more step. I intended to install windows onto my slave drive to see whether I could view any of the files on the puzzling partition; deleted that existing partition on the slave drive, had the installer format it as ntfs, and hit enter for Windows to install there. It chose to begin to format the puzzling partition instead. I immediately hit abort, but it was too late!
Then I attempted to re-boot into OpenSuse but couldn’t because the boot and Grub files had been on the puzzling partition (as I said in my first post). I could have spent time reading threads to find out how to repair/install those files, but since this is a new installation I just re-installed OpenSuse.
In retrospect, I obviously gave the OpenSuse installer permission to read and write to that ntfs partition during installation setup; not sure why it chose to install the boot and Grub files there, but then no longer provided access to that partition.
For other users, I would suggest caution in giving the installer access to ntfs partitions. Can that rw permission be added after the installation is complete?
I know how you feel. It’s a.m. here and I just powered on my computer. My old faithful 500Gb storage drive is sitting there making rrrrrp rrrrrp rrrrrp noises and refusing to start – so that’s all in jeopardy now. I’ll make coffeee and try the three-thumps-hard method of starting it and then leave it on until I can buy a new drive.
