# clarification on NTFS write support



## gardner (Jul 14, 2011)

I have a 7.3R box and the mount_ntfs man page indicates that some limited support for writing is available.
What I want to do is do a filesystem dump onto a plain file on the NTFS volume.  This feels like something that should fit within the scope of "limited writing".

Yet dump is unable to create or write 'foobar.dmp'.

So, can someone clarify what is and isn't really possible with the NTFS filesystem?  Can I write but not create a file?

I realise there is better support through NTFS-3g, but I was hoping to get this done with a base (single user, if possible) configuration.  I'm not in a position where I can easily put new packages on the 7.3R system, even if the package binary was around.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Jul 14, 2011)

If you've good backups of the data on NTFS, defrag and shrink it, then convert the remaining space to fat32? (May not be possible depending upon the partition layout on the disk already...).


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## wblock@ (Jul 14, 2011)

Does mount_ntfs(8) mount the volume read/write by default?  See if you can touch(1) a new file on the NTFS filesystem.


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## gardner (Jul 14, 2011)

mount and mount -o rw yield the same result.  Unable to create files.


```
# touch z.dat
touch: z.dat: No such file or directory

# > z.dat
su: z.dat: No such file or directory

# mkdir foo
mkdir: .: No such file or directory
```

All fairly basic stuff -- I'm not trying to manipulate ACLs or create special filesystem objects.


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## vermaden (Jul 14, 2011)

@gardner

Use NTFS-3G which supports writing to NTFS volumes without any problems, its in _Ports_ and also available as a package.


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## ian-nai (Jul 15, 2011)

vermaden said:
			
		

> @gardner
> 
> Use NTFS-3G which supports writing to NTFS volumes without any problems, its in _Ports_ and also available as a package.



*make search name=ntfs-3g* didn't report anything and *name=ntfs* didn't report anything *obvious*.  What's the name and location of the ntfs-3g port?  thanks!


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## vermaden (Jul 15, 2011)

Its sysutils/fusefs-ntfs mate, quite obvious ;p


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## gardner (Jul 15, 2011)

While ntfs-3g does seem to be the right solution, none of this actually addresses my original question -- what, exactly, is and isn't really possible with the built in NTFS filesystem?  What is the basis for it being documented as supporting "limited writing"?


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## wblock@ (Jul 15, 2011)

I don't know the answer, but am curious about this too.  The version of NTFS or whether certain features are present might cause mount_ntfs(8) to stick to readonly rather than risking a write gone bad.  Could the -m option default to zero?


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## ahavatar (Jul 18, 2011)

gardner said:
			
		

> While ntfs-3g does seem to be the right solution, none of this actually addresses my original question -- what, exactly, is and isn't really possible with the built in NTFS filesystem?  What is the basis for it being documented as supporting "limited writing"?



I don't think that the built-in NTFS supports writing. It even has an issue with displaying non-English file names. 

I use ntfs-3g to access NTFS partitions on Linux and FreeBSD. Most of times, it seems to work well. 

However, I had once a failure that resulted in a broken index in an NTFS partition. I had to run file-check on my Windows to fix this. So, from my experience, even ntfs-3g isn't 100% compatible.


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