I have an external hard drive music program that I am told has NTFS files. Does Linux Mint 18.1 recognize those types of files?

yes. the filesystem is microsoft ntfs. most linuxes deal fine with ntfs formatted hardrives these days.

what error did you get when you plugged it in. maybe you need the ntfs-3g driver ?

Yes, the kernel has support via the ntfs-3g driver.

For more info

Linux has been able to read NTFS for a very long time. You might have problems on some features like encryption and compression.

To write to NTFS you have to have ntfs-3g and most distro's offer it built in I'd think. Easy to add in usually if not. Some live cd's may have you mount the drive.

Might see what fdisk or some of the other tools say about the drive. https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...2-ext3-or-ext4

What is the music program and what sort of music files are you trying to access?

It's a program called Band in a Box produced by PGmusic.com Commonly used by musicians to build tracks

Does BIAB run on Linux? I don't think it does ...

Honestly, you should consider buying a cheap Windows machine and then attaching the drive to it using an external enclosure. It probably isn't really worth your time to try to monkey-around with it too much. If you want what this application does, I would simply buy a copy of the latest version (it isn't expensive), and also buy a used machine to run it on.

But I would kick-the-tires first, because BIAB (although it has improved over the years) still pretty-much just churns out pablum. The arrangements are algorithmically produced, and they sound like it. If you're not yet familiar with the techniques of musical arrangement, it can be a source of ideas and maybe even inspiration.

Thanks sundialcvcs,,,I've used BIAB for over 20 years,,,,have seen lots of improvements,,especially with "real band". I have 4-5 windows machines around,,,,have just started messing with LM. Contacted pgmusic and was told BIAB was NTFS files,,,hence my original question,,,,"does LM recognize NTFS files"

Thanks for your response,,,,Right now I'm test driving LM on a USB stick,,,after I get it installed I'll plug BIAB into it and see what happens,,,

Have you tried LinuxBand?

http://linuxband.org/

whooaaa,,,,never heard of that hydrurga!!!! Amazing,,,,looks just like BIAB. After I get LM installed I'll have to try it. Wonder if features from BIAB (styles etc) will load into it? Of course it may have all it's own features that will Not need any outside things???

Let us know how you get on with it!