HOWTO: Mount NTFS volumes with write support

[sque]

Yes it worked!
Thanx for this fine how-to and a numerous of problems that previous users reported and you replied a solution, they helped a looot.

The only problem is with icons on desktop and link in computer.
I am curious who did cyanideoverdose managed it?

Thanks.. Your howto really helped! (oh and my drives showed up on the gnome desktop right away.. maybe they fixed that problem?)

Dapper full updated user

[pulsharc]

If it complains the disk was not shut down properly, you'll have to boot into Windows and run chkdsk (scandisk) on the drive to mark it as clean.

If you use hibernation in windows it will also give you this error, you just have to boot windows and shutdown normally instead of hibernate and you don't have to run chkdsk. Took me a while to figure out but it works great now! Thanks for the howto.

[SSamiK]

Finally! Read/Write to my NTFS partitions! Thanks for a great howto, it solved one of my biggest problems so far.

[LKRaider]

when you create the user group the GID may not always be the same.

I've updated the tutorial to better address this. Thanks for pointing it out.

I'm the sole user of my desktop.
Do I really need to create a group and then add my user name to it for this or can I simply edit my current fstab line to mount hda1 with fuse?

I am also the sole user of my desktop, and yes, you could do it without using the group assignment.
I used the group because:

1. It is more secure
2. Works for all kinds of users (single & multi)
3. Gives you more options
4. You learn more about Linux

So, even for single-users, it will work fine, but if you want to configure without a group, you sure can too.

Problem with icons on desktop and link in computer

I've filled a bug report about this, but it still remains unsolved. Seems the HAL doesn't recognize fuse mounted devices yet.
A workaround is to manually link the devices from the media folder to the desktop; but I don't know a workaround for the Nautilus 'computer' place, unfortunatelly.

shutdown normally instead of hibernate and you don't have to run chkdsk

That's great! Thanks for finding it out.
Maybe it is a bug of the ntfsprogs package? (I don't see a reason why a ntfs partition wouldn't be clean after hibernating?)

[RRS]

Finally went ahead and followed the rest of your(from step #3 on) instructions earlier today.

I had done the installation and configuring for fuse last week.

Since creating a group just for this one thing seemed like extra work I simply edited my fstab to add the fuse entry from your guide and left the other options as I already had them.

.......umask=000,uid=1000,gid=1000 0    0

Before doing this I unmounted my windows partition.I then rebooted rather then simply remounting.

During the boot process the mount showed a "failed" flag as the system loaded. When I tried to manually mount I was told the device was "damaged" and couldn't be mounted.

I restored the original fstab line:

/dev/hda1       /media/windows ntfs nls=utf8,umask=000,uid=1000,gid=1000 0    0

This allowed me to mount as before, user as owner with read and execute permissions so it apparently was something with fuse that detected the "damage"

I'm guessing at 2 possibilities;
A> I missed a step or performed one incorrectly, a combination of both seems most likely.
B> The reason I want to write into windows is that I managed to corrupt the boot.ini file and can no longer boot the system.

Could "B" be the damage fuse is seeing? As a recent entry (ultra newbie) to the world of computers, let alone Linux, I still lean towards "A".

Sorry for the long post but I've been studying your directions and the Q & A's from others in the thread and haven't found anything similar to my problem.

Thanks for your patience and hopefully you can get me pointed in the right direction.

[gant1979]

Hello all. I to have problems mounting my ntfs drive with write support in Dapper Drake. There is no problem when I mount it with read-only. I get a fail message in the boot process when I try to mount it with write support: "Couldn't mount /dev/sda1, operation not supported.

This is my fstab:

/dev/sda1 /media/windows ntfs-fuse auto,gid=1001,umask=0002 0 0

I have all the required latest packages installed, the ntfs group is 1001, my username belongs in this group and fuse is in /etc/modules.

I can't seem to find the solution. Could it be that the ntfs drive that I want to mount is a sata drive?

[gant1979]

Hmmm Ive fixed it. I to had the same message to check and shutdown properly the windows disk. I now have write and read access but I can't delete!! If I get this correctly it is a bug of ntfsprogs ?

EDIT: Ive noticed that it lets me copy files a limited amount of files to the ntfs drive, usually 5-6. After that I get the error message:

cp: cannot create regular file "filename": Operation not supported.

Any suggestions???

[cooperaa]

Wow this is way more difficult than it should be! I've worked through all sorts of problems thanks to this great thread, but now I'm stuck.

I am able to run "sudo modprobe fuse && sudo mount -a" and everything seems fine, my SATA NTFS partition (double hell) even mounts! The problem is that there is nothing in the drive! No contents! And it seems to think that it is a 8 GB partition with 4 GB used - when in actualit it is a 250 GB partition with probably 180 GB used.

Here's my /etc/fstab:

/dev/sda1 /media/music ntfs-fuse auto,gid=1001,umask=0002 0 0

Any ideas?

[cooperaa]

I can't believe what I was doing wrong... I was looking in /home/music (a directory I had created for my music drive) and do you notice where I'm telling the drive to mount in /etc/fstab? Yeah, in mount/music...

For some reason I can't write to the drive. Does anyone notice any glaring mistakes with my fstab?

[domino]

Seems the HAL doesn't recognize fuse mounted devices yet.
A workaround is to manually link the devices from the media folder to the desktop; but I don't know a workaround for the Nautilus 'computer' place, unfortunatelly.

It kind of gets me wondering why HAL doesn't recognize fuse. You already pointed out that the current kernel already implements the feature.

I also added a link pointing to the mounted ntfs directory in Nautilus bookmarks. It should also show up when browsing to open files.