Liberating NFTS volumes

LzW-x · 06-06-2006, 06:39 PM

I have like a 750gb raid 5 volume formated under XP in 2004 that is now conpletely full...

Linux reads such a device fine but will not write to it! (it is a 4x 250gb 3ware sata setup) What can be done? So far I only have ideas:

- delete it
- Keep dual booting XP and burn/delete it off 4.7gb at a time

Any other ideas?

musicman_ace · 06-06-2006, 07:00 PM

I believe that development stopped on the project, but captive-ntfs allows linux to write to NTFS. You could try that.

Option 2
Buy yourself a external HD copy the data to it
Reformat your raid 5
copy from the external HD to the raid 5
Return the external HD saying that it didn't work under you operating system.

LzW-x · 06-06-2006, 08:37 PM

I will check into your first suggestion because I cannot afford the second one at this time!

My ultimate goal is to have NO ntfs file systems on my computer by 2007!

Stuff will be deleted in december if it is still there... I don't care where it came from or what it is! I'm determined to make myself 100% linux by 2007!!!

Nylex · 06-06-2006, 11:22 PM

There's also write support for NTFS in the kernel now (I can't remember which version it was introduced in, though).

slantoflight · 06-06-2006, 11:34 PM

Liberating an ntfs volume?

Well theres nothing quite like a format C: to do the job.

You could be one the brave few to attempt to boot windows off an ext2 partition or boot linux off ntfs/fat32 vice versa.

http://www.fs-driver.org/

microsoft/linux · 06-06-2006, 11:57 PM

the NTFS write support in the kernel is only partial. IIRC, it will allow you to write files that are the same size,not bigger, not smaller, than the ones they are replacing. I'm not sure creating files is allowed, and I don't know about deleting them.

Dralnu · 06-07-2006, 02:17 AM

NTFS support doesn't support creation/deletion if I remember right. You CAN move data from an NTFS to a Linux, so you could move some, and slowly move it that way. Maybe you could script it out to run fdisk to reduce the NTFS size on your RAID drive with each move, and pretty much automate the whole thing, but I would SERIOUSLY research such a thing first. What I suggest could possibly wipe EVERYTHING off that drive if it goes another way, so look into it and see if you want to take such a chance, and weigh the options.

LzW-x · 06-07-2006, 03:02 AM

Thanks everyone for the replies...

The main goal of ntfs write would be to delete files as they are recorded to cd/dvd... When the volume is empty, it may safely be formated as reiser without the concern for data loss!

It's just stuff from the internet (including a lot of linux iso's) that I could download again but 3/4 of a terbyte is a large amount of data and takes some time to deal with no matter waht you do!

microsoft/linux · 06-07-2006, 08:47 AM

why even delete them if you're going to format at the end anyway? Wouldn't it make more sense just to back up, and format at the end, w/out the deletion step? Unless for whatever reason leaving all the data on there slows down the back up process.

Dralnu · 06-07-2006, 02:54 PM

Another option is to make a list of the files you have (isos, ect.) that you might want to keep on paper, and then reformat the disk. I *think* that you can format a partition in Windows that Linux can write to, but I could be wrong (may need a 2.4 kernel to write to a FAT32 system, but I could be wrong), which would allow you to use it under both, though I don't know the implications of such.

If you want to go totally Linux, if its alot of small files, ReiserFS owns.

Eat that, M$