NTFS Write [CLOSED]

[altair4]

I'm new here and I'm coming from a somewhat older distro so please be patient with me.

Here is a line from my fstab for a WinXP partition formatted in ntfs:
UUID=DA9056C19056A3B3 /media/WinXP ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=0222 0 1

I just wrote to it. You can't write to an ntfs partition using "ntfs" in fstab. You can only write to an ntfs partition using "ntfs-3g" in fstab. Have I not been keeping up with the latest developments or is this a non-standard ntfs driver? Has the old "ntfs" been deprecated and the new "ntfs" = "ntfs-3g".

I'm older than dirt and simply don't believe in writing to an ntfs partition in a dual boot situation. I can always add "ro" to the fstab line for that partition but I'm a little confused. Any illumination would be appreciated.

[Husse]

I'm a bit confused too because I thought that writing to NTFS was enabled with just ntfs in fstab at least from Daryna
However ntfs-3g is in either case what makes it possible to write to NTFS
It's now perfectly safe - of course you don't get it "logged" in the NTFS journal
The opposite is not true (writing from Windows to ext3) - it's possible but not safe

[Fred]

altair4,

In the later versions of Mint, ntfs-3g is called automatically when using ntfs mounting in fstab. ntfs-3g has improved tremendously in the past year or so. Very few problems are now popping up when reading and writing to ntfs partitions these days.

In my opinion r/w access from Linux to ntfs is the most reliable, and safest way to share data. Fat32 has its' own problems, which in my opinion now outweigh the ntfs r/w problems that still exist.

I don't know if there is anything in it that will help you but you might look at the thread referenced below.

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=22093

Fred

[altair4]

I very much appreciate your response and I understand your argument about ntfs r/w but I'm like an old dog that got burnt from touching its nose to the stove. I've had to reinstall too many Windows OSs starting with WinNT3.5 because of file corruption, some of them caused by ntfs-3g back when it was classified as "experimental" ( which wasn't that long ago ). I realize that was then and this is now but I'm just stubborn

This is how I "fixed" my fstab entry in case anyone else wishes to wast some time in fstab and possibly ruin their system :

Original: UUID=DA9056C19056A3B3 /media/WinXP ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=0222 0 1

New: LABEL=WinXP /windows/C ntfs umask=0222,ro 0 0

(1) UUID's drive me crazy so I use "LABEL=" to id partitions in fstab
( Had to do it anyway since I have 2 partitions with the same UUID - that's a long story )
(2) The "ro" is probably redundant given my umask but I did it anyway.
(3) The very last number in the original entry dictates when and if a filesystem check and possible repair is done at boot time on that partition. If you had write access to the partition I suppose that would make sense but since I now only have read access I disabled it by setting it to 0. Don't care very much for one filesystem doing a check on another filesystem when one of them is Microsoft's.

I'm sure I left off a utf-8 parameter or something somewhere along the way but this is working so far and I'm ready to make adjustments if necessary.

I do apologize for what's basically turned into a rant but it just "threw" me a little that "ntfs" is now "ntfs-3g".

[Fred]

altair4,

No apologies necessary. Being an old dog myself I understand perfectly.

Fred