Re: [Nolug] Writing to NTFS

On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Manuel Lora wrote:

> I've been noticing that NTFS write support is still EXPERIMENTAL in 2.4.x and
> still being worked on as of 2.5.70.
>
> Does anyone have experience writing to NTFS?

Yes, don't do it. :) I've had no problems converting NTFS partitions to
FAT32 using Partition Magic, but it is commercial. Otherwise, you must
backup/restore. but you don't want to let linux write to ntfs. Check out
this post on sourceforge:

-ray

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By: flatcap ( Richard Russon )
RE: Write support
2003-05-24 04:12

> I wonder if full write support will soon be available.
 
No, unfortunately not. We understand enough about NTFS to do the job, we
just don't have the free time. We're always looking for volunteers, but
NTFS is a very hard filesystem to work with.
 
> And when u say it is unsafe do u mean that there is a chance for,
> losing all ntfs partition data or just a single file?
 
Good question. The difference is that between data (your files) and
metadata (the structures that make up the filesystem).
 
Some write operations in the old driver were safe, i.e. those that only
changed _data_. Some other operations, e.g. rename, sound simple but in
NTFS they can have big effect. One mistake and boom! Goodbye filesystem.
 
At the moment, the new NTFS driver only supports data changing operations.
This means the driver is simple and safe. Unfortunately only being able to
overwrite existing files isn't much use to most people.
 
Write support isn't being worked on at the moment. The few of us who know
how to do the job are much too busy. (We only work on NTFS as a hobby).
Even if we all had free time, the job ahead is very complex. It could take
many months of dedicated effort.
 
Cheers,
 FlatCap (Rich)
 ntfs@flatcap.org
 
WWW: http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net
IRC: #ntfs on irc.freenode.net
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Received on 06/11/03