Mounting USB NTFS drive.

aje · 03-21-2005, 08:58 AM

I'm sorry for the ignorance of this question but I have absolutely no Idea where to start with this ...

I want to mount a USB drive I have. It is an NTFS partition. Where should I look to?

Namaseit · 03-21-2005, 09:51 AM

You mean how to mount it?

Well typing the command 'dmesg' in a console will tell you wether the device has been recognized properly.
Then you can do 'mount /dev/sda<partition#> /mnt/hd'

so something like 'mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/hd'

but that's assuming you have ntfs filesystem support compiled into you kernel. If you're using the default kernel 2.4.29 or whatever it is then I believe it should be in there.

aje · 03-21-2005, 03:25 PM

Thank you very much.

Do I need to edit my /etc/fstab to access the drive as a regular user and not root?

Namaseit · 03-21-2005, 03:28 PM

I shouldn't think so.

aje · 03-21-2005, 06:38 PM

Then how would I go about doing so? Your directions worked perfectly for root and i copied them exactly. The same does not apply to my regular user account.

Namaseit · 03-21-2005, 07:31 PM

I suppose then you should edit your fstab and allow all users to access it that way.

MMYoung · 03-21-2005, 10:10 PM

I hope you're not going to be writting to the NTFS drive. Writing to NTFS is a hit and miss proposition in Linux, and it's mostly MISS. The ONLY type of write access to NTFS, via the standard kernel options, is overwritting of the same file as long as it is also the SAME FILE LENGTH/SIZE.

From the kernel "help" file:

Quote:

The only supported operation is overwriting existing files, without changing the file length. No file or directory creation, deletion or renaming is possible. Note only non-resident files can be written to so you may find that some very small files (<500 bytes or so) cannot be written to.

I don't even enable it in my kernel configs for now. You're best bet, IMHO, would be to back up the files that are on the drive and format it to FAT32 and use it that way.

Just my opinion,
MMYoung

aje · 03-21-2005, 11:28 PM

I don't plan on trying to write to this drive, I just want to be able to read it as a user. I already learned my lesson when I fried my 76 gigs of unreplaceable data that was more important to me than I can describe by accidentally adding it to my fstab as rw.

MMYoung · 03-21-2005, 11:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by aje
I don't plan on trying to write to this drive, I just want to be able to read it as a user. I already learned my lesson when I fried my 76 gigs of unreplaceable data that was more important to me than I can describe by accidentally adding it to my fstab as rw.

Then all you have to do is add something like this to your /etc/fstab and you should be good to go.

Code:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/ntfs ntfs noauto,users,ro 0 0

That way it's only mounted when you want it mounted (noauto), any user can mout/unmount it (users), and it will only be mounted as read-only (ro). This is assuming that the /dev node is sda1 and you can call the directory in /mnt anything you want.

But then maybe you've already figured this one out.

HTH,
MMYoung

aje · 03-21-2005, 11:48 PM

When I try to mount it using "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/drive" I get the message "only root can do that". When I run this as root, I get "mount point /mnt/drive does not exist".

What may be the cause of my error?

MMYoung · 03-22-2005, 05:41 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by aje
When I try to mount it using "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/drive" I get the message "only root can do that".

That's because only root can mount a filesystem on a device node, just like the error message states.

Quote:

Originally posted by aje
When I run this as root, I get "mount point /mnt/drive does not exist".

It's obvious that you did not create the mount point "/mnt/drive".
Log in as root and create the mount point by:

Code:

mkdir /mnt/drive

drive can be anything that you want it to be, up to you.

Next make sure you have a line for it in your /etc/fstab similar to the one that I posted above. If it ain't there, again as root, edit the file and add it, making sure of the /dev node for the device.

Now log out as root and mount the filesystem by:

Code:

mount /mnt/drive

Don't put the /dev node in the mount command and you *should* be able to mount the filesystem.

For example, I have an external USB hard drive. It is recognised by the system as /dev/sda1 (for Slackware /dev/sda is pretty much the norm) and I have a udev rule written so that a symlink is created in /dev called usbhd1 pointing to sda1. I also have an entry for it in my fstab:

Code:

/dev/usbhd1 /mnt/xhd vfat noauto,users,rw 0 0

Now when I want to mount it all I have to do is type in:

Code:

mount /mnt/xhd

HTH,
MMYoung

MMYoung · 03-22-2005, 06:01 AM

Thought I would give the above suggestions a try on my PC, as I have a NTFS partition on my first HD for Windows XP. So I opened a terminal, logged in as root, and added the following to my fstab:

Code:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c noauto,users,ro 1 0

Then I created the directory

Code:

mkdir /mnt/win_c

Logged out as root and mounted the filesystem as a user:

Code:

mount /mnt/win_c

An icon for win_c "popped" up on my desktop, I clicked on it and was told that I did not have "permission" to view the files on that mount point. In the terminal I typed in:

Code:

dir /mnt/win_c

Message "Permission Denied".

It's an NTFS thing, IMHO, which is why I don't use it in Linux.

Later,
MMYoung

aje · 03-22-2005, 06:18 PM

Thanks a lot for your help

MMYoung · 03-23-2005, 03:51 AM

I just found out what will let you read that drive (I believe anyway). In your fstab add umask=000 to it like so:
noauto,users,umask=000,ro

I just added it to my fstab and now I have permission to read the files on that partition.

Later,
MMYoung