Mounting NTFS filesystems in Linux
FAT filesystems are defined in Linux as VFAT and accessing them is very easy. But sometimes we need to access files in windows(with ntfs system running) while running Linux. So it becomes hassle and time consuming to switch back to windows and transfer the file in a zip drive and access in linux. Still we may encounter problem in reading that particualr file in Linux since the thumb drive is in windows file system. We feel sad again if we dont know how to mount such windows partition or filesystem in Linux system. Dont worry, thats very simple to mount windows partitions or NTFS file system in Linux. Here is a short steps in accessing them in linux. Lets go through them step wise.
STEPS: To mount NTFS filesystem
AFter we download the required package named ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-20XX.X.XX, Example: ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2014.2.15, follow the following procedure.
// Switch to root user
# su - root
// Move to the location where we have downloaded the file
[root@server ~]# cd /root/Downloads
// Uncompress the package
[root@server ~]# tar -zxvf ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2014.2.15.tgz
[root@server Downloads]# cd ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2014.2.15
[root@server ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2014.2.15]#./configure
[root@server ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2014.2.15]# make
[root@server ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2014.2.15]# make install
This way we finished installing the package successfully. Now lets mount the partitions and lists the partitons at first
[root@server ~]# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
222 heads, 30 sectors/track, 23468 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 6660 * 512 = 3409920 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0003558c
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9225 30719235 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 9226 9287 204800 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 9287 13900 15360000 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 13900 23469 31865944 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 13900 16975 10240000 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 16976 20051 10240000 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 20051 23126 10240000 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 23126 23469 1141760 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Disk /dev/sdb: 63.9 GB, 63947145216 bytes
25 heads, 25 sectors/track, 199834 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 625 * 512 = 320000 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x66e838de
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 13 199835 62444352 7 HPFS/NTFS
[root@server ~]#
Here /dev/sdb1 is the windows partition to be mounted and accessed. Here 't' denotes the type of file system
[root@server ~]# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /mnt
[root@server ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 9.7G 527M 8.7G 6% /
tmpfs 625M 80K 625M 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda2 194M 49M 136M 27% /boot
/dev/sda6 9.7G 150M 9.0G 2% /home
/dev/sda7 9.7G 3.0G 6.3G 33% /usr
/dev/sda3 15G 475M 14G 4% /var
/dev/sdb1 932G 233G 700G 25% /mnt --------> this is mounted now
Now you can access the partition and perform your work.
To perform permanent mount, edit the entry in fstab as:
[root@server ~]# vi /etc/fstab
/dev/sdb1 /mnt ntfs-3g ro,umask=0222,defaults 0 0
And reboot. To mount the FAT filesystem, perform like the following
[root@server ~]# mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt
For permanent mounting FAT system, add the fstab entry as:
/dev/sdb1 /mnt vfat ro,umask=0222,defaults 0 0
Thats all. We appreciate for comments.
Thank you.