I realize this question is almost two years old, but I answer it for those who find this in search and need the answer.
First, mount your Windows partition as read-only. If your Windows partition is the first partition on your first hard drive add this to the file /etc/fstab
:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/windows ntfs ro,umask=0222,defaults 0 0
You have to create a directory called windows first.
mkdir /mnt/windows
If you want to mount the partition after boot and not be logged in as root, use this:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/windows ntfs user,ro,umask=0222,defaults 0 0
To mount a specific Windows directory as read and write, use ntfs-3g
or fuse-ntfs-3g
. Most people will want to mount their Documents, so I will use this use example. If you are user David on Windows and david on Linux, use this (substituting fuse-ntfs-3g
for ntfs-3g
or whatever current kernel module you have installed):
/mnt/windows/Users/David/Documents /home/David/Documents ntfs-3g rbind,user,umask=0222,defaults 0 0
rbind
is what remounts an already location to another. For a more detailed explanation of other options in the comma separated list, type info ntfs-3g
in a command console. The Documents directory in Linux must exist and should be empty. This line must be after the line that mounts the Windows partition.
This is for Windows Vista and 7. If you have Windows XP, use /mnt/windows/"Documents and Settings"/David/Documents
. The quotations are important because mount cannot accept spaces in the directory name even though Linux has no problems with spaces in directories.
If you don't have a kernel module that can mount NTFS as read and write, you need to install one.
Ubuntu comes with ntfs-3g
, automount
, and ntfsconfig
. Any currently connected partition should be automatically detected and set up to be mounted automatically. Ubuntu also mounts nonnative partitions like Windows under /media
instead, usually with the name of the operating system, so your Windows 7 partition is mounted at /media/Windows 7
. You will find your fstab
entry uses unicode strings for special characters so that the line says /media/Windows\0407
, where \040
is substituted for the space without the need for quotes.
To mount David's Windows 7 documents in david's Linux home directory in Ubuntu, put this in /etc/fstab
:
/media/Windows\0407/Users/David/Documents /home/David/Documents ntfs-3g rbind,nosuid,user,umask=0222 0 0
I hope this helps.
Either go completely the ntfs-config
route; completely the udev
/ udisks
/ systemd
route (this functionality will vary depending on your distro and version); or completely the manual (/etc/fstab
) route. Do not mix and match them; this only sets you up for confusion.
First, use a tool like gparted
, parted
or Disk Utility
to understand the partition layout of your system. I have no idea what your actual drive letters and partition numbers are, but it's going to look something like this (number and path of partitions will vary):
- /dev/sda1 => Windows boot (NTFS)
- /dev/sda2 => Windows system (NTFS)
- /dev/sda3 => Windows recovery (NTFS)
- /dev/sda4 => extended partition (assuming you've formatted the disk as MBR)
- /dev/sda5 => Mint boot partition (ext4?)
- /dev/sda6 => Mint root partition (ext4?)
- /dev/sda7 => Mint /home partition (ext4?)
- /dev/sda8 => Mint swap
ntfs-config
is not a particularly good tool compared to others, even several releases ago. I don't recommend it.
The other option is to manually write your /etc/fstab
with the appropriate mount listings. This method will work fine and is reliable, and you should uninstall ntfs-config
if you plan on doing this. The file format of fstab
is very simple; read the manpage (google it). It's basically: where the partition is; where to mount it; what type of filesystem; then the options; then 0 0
(no need to worry about what those 0s are for). Each field is whitespace-delimited.
Another option, if you're using Gnome or KDE on modern Debian (Debian Wheezy or Testing or Unstable) is to let the file manager list the drives for you. This detection is done using the udisks
daemon, assuming your distro has properly configured it and its dependencies (DBus). Your original problem seems to be that the drives don't necessarily always detect properly using udisks
, perhaps because of filesystem errors that need to be resolved using ntfsfix
or perhaps ntfs.fsck
(again, this depends highly upon the exact version of the packages installed on your system, which in turn depends on the release of your distro).
Just don't try to mix and match all these different approaches. Either hard-code your mount points in /etc/fstab
and ignore the udisks/gvfs-based autodetection in your file manager, or use (exclusively) your udisks-integrated file manager without installing ntfs-config
(and clear out your NTFS mounts from /etc/fstab
if you go this route).
I really can't recommend using ntfs-config
for any reason, since people have reported problems with it that simply writing fstab
by hand won't cause. A "dumb" user is more adaptable than a "smart" program.
Best Answer
if you want to stay on a network connection, you have to use the smb protocol for the connection. in this case you have to set up a samba server on your Ubuntu computer. then you can use it on Windows without installing something there.
if speed is that necessary that you want to insert the drive and use a sata connection, then try ext2fsd, a tool which mounts any ext Filesystem on Windows
if you are using btrfs, you don't have a chance to read it directly on your Windows machine, in that case you must have got a running Linux with a file server. if you are using zfs then it's the same thing like with btrfs
EDIT what you've heard, that samba is bad is in some cases very right. if you want to protect your data and want to keep them secret, samba is as bad as posting the data somewhere in the Internet. but because of the low encryption and security overhead it's also kind of the fastest protocol