Help File Library: Mounting NTFS Filesystems

This is a very common question, and I think it requires a quick Help File. Its quite simple, really. Just follow my directions, and you'll be able to mount an NTFS drive anywhere.

First, we need to see if you can mount NTFS drives. An easy way is to, as root, type:

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows -t ntfs -o,ro

Where the a is whatever device your NTFS is on, and the 1 is the partition. If it responds with an error about the mount point being non-existent, just type:

mkdir /mnt/windows/

If it doesn't mount, saying the filesystem is not supported, you need to recompile the kernel. This is outside of the scope of this discussion, but when you do so, make sure to turn on the ntfs driver under File systems.

I'm going to assume the partition mounted. Let's add an fstab entry to make our lives easier. Mine looks like this:

/dev/hda1  /windows  ntfs  ro,user,noauto,umask=0007,gid=1000  0  0

So, what does this all mean? The first entry is the device name, the second the mount point, the third the type, next the options to make it read-only, mountable by users, make sure it doesn't automount, grant read permissions, and the group id for the group who owns the mount point. The last two items, 0 and 0, are dump and pass, and it doesn't matter what they do.

Now, mount it as a user with the command

mount /windows

where /windows is your mount point. Congratulations. Your files in Windows are now at your penguin-loving fingertips!

Now, fly my monkeys!