1. Introduction

Purpose of this article is to provide to reader step by step guide, how to mount partition with NTFS file system on the Linux operating system. This article consists of two parts:

• mount NTFS file system read only access
• mount NTFS file system with read write access

2. Mount NTFS file system with read only access

2.1. NTFS kernel support

Majority of current Linux distributions supports NTFS file system out of the box. To be more specific, support for NTFS file system is more feature of Linux kernel modules rather than Linux distributions. First verify if we have NTFS modules installed on our system.

ls /lib/modules/2.6.18-5-686/kernel/fs/ | grep ntfs 

NTFS module is presented. Let's identify NTFS partition.

2.2. Identifying partition with NTFS file system

One simple way to identify NTFS partition is:

fdisk -l | grep NTFS 

There it is: /dev/sdb1

2.3. Mount NTFS partition

First create a mount point:

mkdir /mnt/ntfs 

Then simply use mount command to mount it:

mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb1 /mnt/ntfs 

Now we can access NTFS partition and its files with read write access.

3. Mount NTFS file system with read write access

Mounting NTFS file system with read write access permissions is a bit more complicated. This involves installation of addition software such as fuse and ntfs-3g. In both cases you probably need to use your package management tool such as yum, apt-get, synaptic etc.. and install it from your standard distribution repository. Check for packages ntfs-3g and fuse. We take the other path which consists of manual compilation and installation fuse and ntfs-3g from source code.

3.1. Install addition software

3.1.1. Fuse Install

Download source code from: http://fuse.sourceforge.net/

wget http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/fuse/fuse-2.7.1.tar.gz 

Compile and install fuse source code:
Extract source file:

tar xzf fuse-2.7.1.tar.gz 

Compile and install

cd fuse-2.7.1
./configure --exec-prefix=/; make; make install 

3.1.2. ntfs-3g install

Download source code from: http://www.ntfs-3g.org/index.html#download

wget http://www.ntfs-3g.org/ntfs-3g-1.1120.tgz 

Extract source file:

tar xzf ntfs-3g-1.1120.tgz 

Compile and install ntfs-3g source code
NOTE: Make sure that you have pkg-config package installed, otherwise you get this error message:

checking for pkg-config... no
checking for FUSE_MODULE... configure: error: FUSE >= 2.6.0 was not found. Either it's not fully 
installed (e.g. fuse, fuse-utils, libfuse, libfuse2, libfuse-dev, etc packages) or files from an old
version are still present. See FUSE at http://fuse.sf.net/ 

cd ntfs-3g-1.1120
./configure; make; make install 

3.2. Mount ntfs partition with read write access

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /mnt/ntfs/ 

NOTE: ntfs-3g recommends to have at least kernel version 2.6.20 and higher.

linuxconfig.org~# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /mnt/ntfs/
WARNING: Deficient Linux kernel detected. Some driver features are
         not available (swap file on NTFS, boot from NTFS by LILO), and
         unmount is not safe unless it's made sure the ntfs-3g process
         naturally terminates after calling 'umount'. If you wish this
         message to disappear then you should upgrade to at least kernel
         version 2.6.20, or request help from your distribution to fix
         the kernel problem. The below web page has more information:
         http://ntfs-3g.org/support.html#fuse26 

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Comments (13)

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• 2009-09-11 17:34:48 |Your IP address:124.124.244.xxx| Anshul  - Mounting NTFS file system in linux

  It is good guidence it will surly help me

  ReplyQuote

• 2009-10-31 02:41:33 |Your IP address:217.16.125.xxx| Luigi

  Helped me solving my problem, thx a lot!

  ReplyQuote

• 2010-03-03 23:56:43 |Your IP address:115.64.70.xxx| zopeon  - Fuse error

  Hi, I have RHEL 4 with kernel 2.6.9-22. I have installed fuse 2.7.4-8.
  When I try to mounht NTFS drive using ntfs-3g it gives error as
  Fuse not found, use modprobe fuse.
  I am able to mount it as read only.
  What should I do?

  Thanks

  ReplyQuote

• 2009-11-14 19:01:40 |Your IP address:202.91.85.xxx| Manas Sarkar  - Thnx

  Thnx a lot

  ReplyQuote

• 2009-12-01 01:10:17 |Your IP address:62.45.27.xxx| Paul  - Perfect

  Works on Debian 5.0.3
  I put this in a file:
  fdisk -l | grep NTFS
  ls -l /mnt
  umount /mnt/ntfs_c
  mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/ntfs_c
  umount /mnt/ntfs_p
  mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /mnt/ntfs_p
  umount /mnt/ntfs_q
  mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb5 /mnt/ntfs_q
  umount /mnt/ntfs_r
  mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb6 /mnt/ntfs_r

  echo Hit a key to continue
  read
  

  ReplyQuote

• 2009-12-07 21:08:00 |Your IP address:117.192.97.xxx| vimal  - mounting ntfs file system in linux

  its good,solved my problem, thanks a lot

  ReplyQuote

• 2009-12-24 00:00:07 |Your IP address:140.105.47.xxx| TAREQ  - ntfs in linux

  I installed ntfs-3g, fuse & i m just able to mount the ntfs file in read mode, i can not write anything there, would u like to help me.
  Thank u in advance

  ReplyQuote

• 2010-01-25 17:45:18 |Your IP address:91.127.170.xxx| Lubos  - ntfs in linux

  Can you post more info such us output from:

  fdisk -l
  mount
  cat /proc/filesystems
  and etc.

  thank you

  ReplyQuote

• 2010-01-24 20:49:56 |Your IP address:117.254.17.xxx| nitissh  - Very Well written guide - Thanks :)

  Very well written guide, thanks a lot.

  :)

  nitissh / linux the best

  ReplyQuote

• 2010-03-03 23:54:16 |Your IP address:115.64.70.xxx| sumir saini  - Mount NTFS in read write mode

  Thanks a lot.. Good KB article.... It will surely help...

  ReplyQuote

• 2010-03-04 22:10:03 |Your IP address:116.193.175.xxx| rana.tmu

  Thanks a lot.

  ReplyQuote

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