Knoppix 5.01 write to NTFS -- it works!

Jacky · Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 9:23 am

Hello friends, I am new to this forum but have been using Knoppix for some time.

I am learning to use Knoppix as a rescue/maintenance tool and I really needed the NTFS write capability so I was delighted to see the "transparent" NTFS in 5.01.

1) I have been testing the NTFS write capability for a few days and some of you may be interested in the results (which are pretty good):

- click on icon - mounts NTFS partition smoothly read-only
- right-click, to select change to read/write

- create new directory in NTFS - ok
- copy files to new directory - ok but limit of 7 new files can be copied into each directory. This is a documented limitation - something which the developers are still working on

- open a file on NTFS partition, edit it with editor, save - ok
- copy a mpg file to NTFS partition, play with kaffeine - ok
- delete filesand directories - ok

- introduced test virus sample (eicar.com) onto NTFS partition
- scanned with f-prot - detected and removed

After all the above, any new files on the NTFS partition can be seen under XP with no problems
Chkdsk under XP shows no problems.

2) Just yesterday, I discovered "ntfs-3g" which is a beta improvement of the ntfsmount capability in Knoppix 5.01. ntfs-3g removes the 7-10 file per directory limit. Results:

- ntfs-3g downloaded and installed - ok

- copied a huge directory tree of 5000+ files (some directories with 100+ files) of digital photos to the ntfs partition. Whole thing was about 3GB. - ok

- opens digital files in GIMP, edited and saved - ok

I have created a dedicated NTFS partition for stress-testing, and can take all sorts of risks. So I welcome any suggestions on what kinds of stress-test scenarios you would like me to try.

Best regards.

OP4Latino · Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 1:25 am

Nice to know you have volunteered to do the test. I have some ideas for tests:

How about multiple writings, like in a torrent. Try to find a torrent that downloads a directory.

Maybe run a browser in that partition. Download the official binary of firefox and run it in that partition while you're using the torrent. Surf the net for a while. ie: Go to google images so it caches lots of pics. install extensions, etc.

If these test are positives, we will be enable to share a firefox's profile in win and linux

PD: Tell us about this ntfs-3g. did you apt-get it or you installed from source?

Jacky · Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 12:24 pm

ntfs-3g is still beta, and has to be compiled from source. But the steps are quite simple. The details are here, and the instructions are quite clear:

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=23836054&forum_id=2697

Note that ntfsmount (which comes with knoppix 5.01) and ntfs-3g are user-space filesystems, and you don't mount the ntfs partition with a normal "mount" command -- you use "ntfsmount" and "ntfs-3g"

Further test results:

- I installed mozilla onto ntfs partition and ran off it. Surfing images via google image search - no problems.

- Copied huge file of 2GB to ntfs. A bit slow but not really noticeable. Otherwise ok. I don't have files bigger than 2GB -- will try something bigger next time.
- Copied UNIONFS/usr to ntfs. This is a huge directory tree with about 74 thousand files total about 1+ GB. No problems.
- Deleted all the files copied. No problems.
- Occasionally, when copying, there is a warning "Could not change file permissions...." I will ask the developers what this is about. But it doesn't affect the copying.
- Haven't tried the bittorrent download yet.

Been running the ntfs partition with Knoppix the whole day, checking back and forth with XP, so far no problems except for the warning above.

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