Ubuntu NTFS question

[Teth]

Ok I reinstalled my home PC media server after a HD crash (the iron filings in the drive kind). I have opted for Ubuntu this time it was fedora 2 beta before. Its running nicely tidy install etc and my raid volume is accessable its 4x 300gb drives in raid 5 formatted with NTFS. Ubuntu can read from it but it wont write to it. I had my fedora set up to write to this same NTFS volume just fine. Is there something I'm missing does Ubuntu need extra help an unsupported package etc to write NTFS ?

[Geoff]

Write support for NTFS in Linux is considered Experimental and therefore dangerous. You should not really use write support because although it'll probably work, it might not. If it doesn't your drive breaks. I'm suprised Fedora hasn't hosed your drive already.

 

Now, that said, due to the wonders of WINE you can use Captive NTFS to glue the windows NTFS.SYS driver into the Linux kernel and get full read/write support with the MS driver and thus (in theory) no chance of hosing your drive. A comprehensive howto is here:

 

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=217009

 

However the 'recommended' method is to load the ext3 drivers on Windows. That way you get access to your Linux drive(s) from Windows and can move things in and out from Linux that way.

 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd

 

Of course there's nothing stopping you doing both. But that'd be showing off.

[Teth]

This is an evolved thing. It started out as 1 300g drive then 2, thena third and I did some jugling to go raid 5 this involved HDs into a previous place I worked and filling they're file server with 500+G of data and then back off. Now its a single drive over 1 TB NTFS formatted and its something of a nightmare. There is no sane way to back it up in order to go from NTFS to Ext3. I trust accessing the drive using a questionable kernel module over doing some kind of ntfs to ext3 conversion.. if its even possible.

 

Now having said that the captive NTFS.sys method seems like a great idea and I'll definetly be giving this a go when I get time at the weekend. I'd never have found that myself, thanks. In the mean time I guess I'll just have to make do with read only access

 

Since you brought up wine. The one niggle I have running linux on this system is my lack of skype I like to keep it ona seperate machine to the one I game on because as anyone that uses it will know it memory leaks at an unbelievable rate. Have you heard of any projects to crack the skype protocol or run it on wine?

[Geoff]

This is an evolved thing. It started out as 1 300g drive then 2, thena third and I did some jugling to go raid 5 this involved HDs into a previous place I worked and filling they're file server with 500+G of data and then back off. Now its a single drive over 1 TB NTFS formatted and its something of a nightmare. There is no sane way to back it up in order to go from NTFS to Ext3. I trust accessing the drive using a questionable kernel module over doing some kind of ntfs to ext3 conversion.. if its even possible.

 

You misunderstood why I mentioned the Ext3 driver for Windows. I wasn't suggesting you convert your Windows partitions to ext3. I was suggesting you educate Windows about your existing Linux partitions.

 

The one niggle I have running linux on this system is my lack of skype

 

There's a native version of Skype for Linux.

 

gking@terror:~$ apt-cache search skype
skype - Free Internet Telephony - The whole world can talk for free

[Teth]

I'm an idiot 1am was not a good time to post. I got ventrilo and skype confused. Skype has a native version Vent has been working on one for years. Having said that with a bit of googling this morning there seems to be a beta that seems quite stable going to give it a look.

 

I don't think I missunderstood you I realised the ext3 driver was for windows I just didn't see where that would get me. The machine in question runs linux now the only problem is that the main storage volume in it the 1.2TB Raid voume is NTFS formatted and without an 800gb drive to move everything to I can't convert that volume to ext3 for native use in linux. So I just have to make do with "Beta" NTFS support. I used that beta support for over 18 months on fedora without issue tho. I sind many things in Linux are like gmail, forever in beta even tho they are more stable than alot of widows software that calls itself a 1.x release.

[MkII]

However the 'recommended' method is to load the ext3 drivers on Windows. That way you get access to your Linux drive(s) from Windows and can move things in and out from Linux that way.

 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd

Thats good - hadn't heard of that before. I was thinking about making a Fat32 partition for writing from Linux.

 

How does that affect files downloaded onto an ext3 partition? - does it 'break' them in any way?

[Geoff]

How does that affect files downloaded onto an ext3 partition? - does it 'break' them in any way?

 

There's no journal support. So you might lose files after powerloss/crash.