Im running FC4 kernel 2.6.17-1.2141_FC4smp, downloaded and installed the kernel-module-ntfs for the specific kernel. Installed it successfully. When I attached my USB external harddrive with NTFS file system. I get this error when I run, dmesg | grep NTFS

NTFS driver 2.1.27 [Flags: R/W MODULE].
NTFS volume version 3.1.
NTFS-fs error (device sdc1): load_system_files(): Volume is dirty. Mounting read-only. Run chkdsk and mount in Windows.

No wonder the /media/usbdisk is alway read-only... Has any one encounter this? Have fix for this? Thanks!

As far as I know (and I know very little, so don't take this as authoritative), there's no way to over-ride that bother besides mounting the drive in Windows. My basic understanding is this: if the drive isn't cleanly unmounted in Windows, it won't be marked as cleanly unmounted, and Linux NTFS utilities know better than to mess with it. This is probably a good thing, but it's definitely a hassle. The only solution I know of is to plug the drive into a Windows box, run scandisk or chkdisk, and then try again. If there's another way, I'd love to know it.

Yes, I have done that. Actually to test it, I used a 256 USB flash drive format it under windowsXP to NTFS and copied a simple text file. Then connect to my FC4 box. I also followed the instructions by plugging it back to a windows box and did a chkdsk, it came out clean. I can see the contents to the usb drive, but it doesn't allow me to write to write to it. Even if I mount is as umask=0, it would show rwxrwxrwx but still can't write to it, even as a root user.