NTFS support in Linux

English Hardware
1

I’m going to buy an additional hard drive primarily for temporary data and random stuff (such as video captures, video editing, etc.) It ought to be accessible (read and write) on both Windows and Linux.

I could just make two partitions on it, one for Windows and another for Linux, but it would be nicer if the entire disk would be available on both systems.

Thus it has to use a file system that Windows supports. NTFS is the most rational choice for this (because it’s the most efficient). Linux has some support for NTFS, but how reliable is it? Can I configure OpenSuse to have reliable read/write access to the NTFS disk? How good is the support? (And if yes, how exactly does it happen?)

2

Hi
Look at using ext3, it’s an active project as well…
http://www.ext2fsd.com/

3

NTFS-3g has been around for several years and I don’t see any problems being reported on forums. I certainly have never encountered any. The only issue might be whether you intend to use the drive solely for storage or for files you have edited. There is a remote possibility that modifying files in Linux and then saving them to an NTFS partition might confuse the journal - but I have yet to hear of anyone reporting this and it may be a myth which has persisted because of problems with the pre-NTFS-3g drivers.

4

AFAIK Linux must be installed and running on a “native” Linux kernel mode file system.
And, AFAIK Windows does not easily support any kind of direct access to a “native” Linux file system.

On the other hand, NTFS is one of a few file systems which are implemented as FUSE (Files in User Space). FUSE file systems are not “native” kernel mode file systems.
Nowadays, Linux support for NTFS is very good, high performant and reliable.

On general principles, you should never access the OS files of a non-running OS anyway, it’s a recipe for corrupting an OS so that it can’t boot.

So, the optimal solution which I implemented on my own laptop long ago when I was multi-booting instead of virtualizing was to implement a data partition(actually a separate disk) accessible to all OS running on my machine, formatted in NTFS. It worked very nicely, accessible to both openSUSE and Windows OS.

Going about FUSE the other way, there <are> implementations of “FUSE on Windows” but my explorations a few years ago resulted in very poor Windows performance and reliability. I haven’t heard anything has changed and believe development was dead at the time.

TSU

5

For a shared disk with multi-media data, NTFS should be fine. The linux support is pretty good.

The one caution is with Windows 8 (or 8.1). Avoid the fast boot setting (which is default) as that leaves the NTFS file system in an unstable state.

I am assuming that this is not for the operating system files, only for data files.

My personal choice for doing this was to put the shared data on a network volume using samba as server software. In case it wasn’t clear, Malcolmlewis is suggesting “ext3”, but installing a Windows driver that allows access to “ext3” file systems from Windows.

6

On 2014-08-31 00:16, nrickert wrote:
>
> For a shared disk with multi-media data, NTFS should be fine. The linux
> support is pretty good.

I agree.

There is currently no other filesystem that can be easily shared between
Linux and Windows, alternating, with big file support.

There are a few issues or caveats, though. For instance, ntfs-3g is
slow, or rather, it can use a lot of CPU, and if your CPU is otherwise
busy, or not a fast one, the driver writes slower. I have experienced
this one.

Another caveat is permissions: Linux does not support the full set of
permissions/attributes native to ntfs. Instead, at mount time the entire
partition is owned by the user that mounts the ntfs volume, or one
specified at mount time. Same for user and group permissions. Which is a
pity, because NTFS does have a complex set of permissions, akin to Linux
ACLs.

This is not a big issue if you are the sole user of the computer.

> The one caution is with Windows 8 (or 8.1). Avoid the fast boot setting
> (which is default) as that leaves the NTFS file system in an unstable
> state.

Indeed. That reminds me, that in case of corruption, you have to repair
it in Windows.

> I am assuming that this is not for the operating system files, only for
> data files.

Mine too.

> My personal choice for doing this was to put the shared data on a
> network volume using samba as server software. In case it wasn’t clear,
> Malcolmlewis is suggesting “ext3”, but installing a Windows driver that
> allows access to “ext3” file systems from Windows.

My understanding is that it works worse than ntfs in Linux, dunno why. :-?

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

7

This is implemented how I described in my post “FUSE on Windows” which in general basically sucks and is unreliable (thereby also risking the files you access this way). And last I checked (long ago) development had stopped on any open, public implementations(a commercial version existed but I didn’t look into that, it was expensive).

TSU

8

All of my Data is on an NTFS partition so that it can be accessed from most systems without problems. My openSUSE reads & writes to it constantly, no problems. Has been that way on my main machines for a long, long time.

There are multiple ways to do this. In my case, I prefer to have it not automatically mount. Instead, I mount the NTFS partition through Dolphin as soon as I log in to KDE.

I keep the partition (which is on the save drive as Linux) synchronized with an NTFS partition on my external portable drive using Unison, as well as to a USB stick.

This way, I have my Data with me wherever I go, whether it is to work on someone’s system for them or to use another computer to do my own work.