The "NTFS resurrection" has occurred for Linux 7.1

Posted by somerandomxander@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 113 comments

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7lhz9x6k8emmd7c8@reddit

Still waiting for a method to keep my NTFS file creation date when moving them to ext4.

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Salt_Scratch_8252@reddit

Would this make a shared steam partition (so that windows and linux could both use it) viable?

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nuclear-purple@reddit

I used to have a shared btrfs partition using the winbtrfs driver on windows. Not perfect, not immune to issues, but it saved me the headache of having to configure steam on NTFS on linux.

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tornadozx2@reddit

I recall seeing an advice against such scenario as it would create issues.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

The issue was WINE using names for files that NTFS can not handle. But not sure if it's true as some say that they use It without issues

Also it's a weird situation and NTFS Supports every character on their partition system, but Windows can not handle every character on the FS

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tornadozx2@reddit

Thanks for the clarification, I read it a while ago and I don't remember the techicalities.

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calinet6@reddit

I actually ran this for several years without any major issues. There were some specific steps to set it up, but it technically worked.

Still had some corruption eventually, but it was repairable. Still wouldn't recommend. I switched to Linux exclusively after a while.

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doc_willis@reddit

You really should not be playing your Steam games from a NTFS, they can have slower load times, and other quirky issues.

This has been doable with NTFS-3g for a long time now.

It is POSSIBLE, but not recommended. And some Distros (Bazzite) specifically say they do NOT support such a setup due to the issues. That distro even pops up a Dialog/notification on me when I plug in a NTFS drive saying as much.

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linuxjohn1982@reddit

Was it ever dead? I always used ntfs-3g with no problems, since over a decade ago.

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palapapa0201@reddit

I have always had problems reading NTFS files from Linux. I posted about it here https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1higtrz/some_files_in_a_ntfs_partition_are_only_readable/

Hopefully this update solves it.

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linuxjohn1982@reddit

Was this with or without the ntfs-3g package installed?

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palapapa0201@reddit

I have tried both ntfs3g and ntfs3 and they both have the same issue

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Tireseas@reddit

NTFS3, the in kernel driver which is different from the fuse based ntfs-3g, was basically ghosted by it's maintainer shortly after being merged. Several other in kernel drivers have come and faded as well.

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hukupaku@reddit

Ghosted?

It looks like the last patches were sent by the maintainer in February https://www.phoronix.com/news/NTFS3-Linux-7.0#:~:text=The%20NTFS3%20driver%20maintained%20by,Up%20For%20Linux%207.0%2Drc6

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Tireseas@reddit

Yeah there was a big deal about it back shortly after it was merged.

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mycall@reddit

I had such high hopes for Paragon's NTFS driver. I still use their APFS driver although it macOS First Aid is definitely helpful.

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PJBonoVox@reddit

Not a reflection on the project or the effort, but I'm curious- Who uses NTFS on Linux with this feature exception of fixing a Windows machine or copying some files?

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chic_luke@reddit

You might have some old, huge unmigrated NTFS disks that is just too expensive / painful to migrate now

While they are fading in popularity for lighter files, thumb drives and portable SSDs are still pretty widely used to move files across machines. Those will always be NTFS

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sunkenrocks@reddit

ExFAT is pretty commonly used on removable drives.

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Lapeppaplus@reddit

The use case of dualboot and share gaming folder is very commom on my friends circle

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ImNotABotScoutsHonor@reddit

How to end up with corrupted games 101.

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Lapeppaplus@reddit

Never happened

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ImNotABotScoutsHonor@reddit

Happens all the time.

I don't give a fuck, I'm not stupid enough to do it.

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Lapeppaplus@reddit

Never happened with me.

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ImNotABotScoutsHonor@reddit

iT wOrkS oN My mAcHinE

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Haniasita@reddit

it’s funny because you’re right, I did experience corruption once doing this, but your attitude is so grating that I don’t want to defend you.

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ImNotABotScoutsHonor@reddit

I need no defending, thanks.

People will have their opinions and roll the dice.

I personally won't take that chance.

If anybody decides to ignore a warning that is easily verified to be a real danger, that's on them and doesn't affect me in the slightest.

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Haniasita@reddit

that’s what you picked up in my response? dumb

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ImNotABotScoutsHonor@reddit

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Lapeppaplus@reddit

I wonder why you are so comcern about how other people use their own pc

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Indolent_Bard@reddit

Because it's not a matter of if, but when they have an issue.

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Malsententia@reddit

Can't speak for others but nah, no corruption here. The only exception to that is the one time I booted my windows drive in a VM while WHILE it was still mounted in linux.

That mistake was so miraculously bad it corrupted the actual physical medium of the drive itself, beyond use after even reformatting.

....so now I don't do that. But dual boot usage, so long as you do a full shut down (not windows' default semi-hibernation shut downs) should generally be fine.

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Linuxologue@reddit

I have installed windows and visual studio in a virtual machine. I mount the disk on Linux and use clang to cross compile C/C++ for the target windows-msvc using the msvc and windows sdk headers and libraries, using system include and system library flags pointing to the windows partition.

This is slightly more convenient than using the mingw compilers which require additional runtime libraries. And obviously much more convenient that actually booting windows

I do exactly the same with macOS using the apfs dkms driver and freeBSD UFS, so from my machine I can cross compile to all major OSes.

I should also be able to run the c++ compiler in wine, have not tried that yet though.

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TTachyon@reddit

There are more than one projects that automate the downloading & extracting of headers and system libs of msvc to be used on a linux machine.

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Linuxologue@reddit

Cool.

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LoserOtakuNerd@reddit

I run a dual boot system and use the Windows boot drive's extra space as mass storage for my Fedora boot drive.

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regeya@reddit

For anyone else wondering, unless something has improved drastically, this is a really bad idea. If you want to share files between Windows and Linux, IMHO you're stuck with fat 32 or exfat for the safest options.

I did this for a while, ended up having to restore from backup a little too often for my comfort

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Indolent_Bard@reddit

But those aren't journaling final systems, so corruption is much more likely.

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Top-Rub-4670@reddit

Hence why we're all happy there's a new driver to replace ntfs3 and ntfs-3g.

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Infiniti_151@reddit

Same. I use about 150 GB including swap partition for Fedora and the rest for Windows 10.

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LoserOtakuNerd@reddit

How do you automount on boot? I've been having issues getting that going on Fedora 43.

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Infiniti_151@reddit

Do you have Bitlocker encryption on? I use a BEK file to autodecrypt it at boot with cryptsetup (/etc/crypttab) and then add that crypttab entry in /etc/fstab) to automount.

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LoserOtakuNerd@reddit

I do not. It's literally just a low-stakes installation for a couple games with invasive anti-cheat. I'm probably just configuring the fstab file wrong.

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Indolent_Bard@reddit

The fact that you need to edit a freaking file just to get a drive to auto mount on boot is so stupid. Luckily on Nobira, I didn't have to deal with any such BS.

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Ok-Anywhere-9416@reddit

Use this https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows

In the fstab you can set ntfs3 instead of lowntfs-3g and use this additional mount option: windows_names along with uid=1000,gid=1000,rw,user,exec,umask=000 0 0

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hjake123@reddit

I've got my nrtfs backup drive (a SATA drive if that matters) mounted like this:

UUID=(my uuid) /mnt/hdd ntfs defaults 0 0

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Infiniti_151@reddit

Yeah then it's definitely fstab issue, probably just wrong mount options. I'll add mine here when I reach home if anyone needs them.

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Jarngreipr9@reddit

Wait you can autoboot ntfs with bitlocker on?

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Infiniti_151@reddit

Yes, there are many ways to do it. Cryptsetup, Dislocker, TPM2. But I don't use TPM2 method as it's possible to be locked out after a BIOS update as it changes the PCR value. You need to suspend unlocking, update BIOS and then reseal the key with systemd-cryptenroll. Dislocker is good if you need a user-space solution. Cryptsetup is kernel native and supports BEK files.

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Jarngreipr9@reddit

Thanks! For my use case I'd probably look into cryptsetup

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loscrossos@reddit

this is my fstab. just replace with your uuid

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a device; this may
# be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices that works even if
# disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). 
#
# <file system>             <mount point>          <type>      <options>                 <dump>  <pass>

UUID=myUUID1              /mnt/myonedrive/    ntfs-3g        defaults                      0            0
UUID=myUUID2              /mnt/myotherdrive/ exfat            defaults,umask=0000  0            0

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howardhus@reddit

in ubuntu its just another entry n fstab. works flawless

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SomeDumbPenguin@reddit

Folks are mentioning the valid dual boot use case, but I'd also add it's handy for when you deal with Windows in a virtual environment off from a Linux host as well. Being able to properly handle NTFS is useful when you need to mount the virtual drives regularly

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LuckySage7@reddit

🤷 ever since I completely deleted Windows in 2020, I've formatted all my raw storage SSD drives from NTFS to ExFAT. I'll probably never use NTFS ever again if I can avoid it lol.

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Novel_Lie5519@reddit

??? bro is using an unjournaled fs for important storage?

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thinkpad_t69@reddit

I don't blame them. If you look up how to share games between Windows and Linux, almost everyone tells you to use exFAT without warning about the risks, probably because they don't realize that Proton doesn't even support exFAT in the first place. I stupidly followed one of those guides when I added a second SSD to my laptop (back when it was cheap) and I ended up having to reformat the drive to NTFS and copy everything all over again.

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Kurgan_IT@reddit

No sane person should run NTFS on Linux, but a lot of people have external drives that need to be read from windows, too. NTFS is the only decent file system that can be used on both Windows and Linux. As a sysadmin I happen to use NTFS capabilities on Linux a lot. For usb drives, for data recovery, etc. OF course I'd never use NTFS on a Linux-only drive.

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litelinux@reddit

Lotta USBs and mobile hard drives are NTFS

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PJBonoVox@reddit

Not quite sure what you're trying to say there.

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litelinux@reddit

Well if you need to share files with friends via their USBs or hard drives, more often than not they are formatted with NTFS, so NTFS write would kinda be necessary here.

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Malsententia@reddit

why no exfat? I never use ntfs for usb drives.

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lorlen47@reddit

It's not journaled, so it has a much higher chance of data corruption.

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Malsententia@reddit

Obviously, but it is the standard and the default.

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pan_kotan@reddit

well... maybe you don't, but other people --- esp. Windows people --- do, and when they come to you with NTFS pen drive and ask you to write some document files for them or drop some photos, would you offer them to erase all their personal data on the drive just to do that?

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Malsententia@reddit

no, because exfat is the standard for larger flash drives these days, so their drive is most likely formatted with exfat.

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pan_kotan@reddit

fair point, but still, some ppl bring their NTFS-formatted external HDDs to me

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Malsententia@reddit

fair enough. I don't have an unformatted external hdd or (non stick)ssd handy, but with usb sticks, i just confirmed, https://i.imgur.com/Mh0rsjE.png
I'm not saying there's no use case(and I'm delighted that there's even better support now), just saying that ntfs on your average keychain drive (or sd cards) is quite uncommon. Windows' defaults aside(since average Joe doesn't bother to reformat his drive), those often tend to come preformatted as exfat from the manufacturer /shrug

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Zaev@reddit

I have a second SSD with stuff from my Windows days in it that's still NTFS. I could transfer off the data; reformat; and transfer it back, but that's more hassle than it's worth while NTFS is still working fine

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pan_kotan@reddit

Dual-boot. I have 2 SSDs for Linux and Windows respectively. And 1 big HDD as a file dump, shared between them.

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ThellraAK@reddit

Sneakernet files to my wife's computer.

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usernamedottxt@reddit

USB drives is all for me at this point.

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Enderbyte09@reddit

My shared drive between my Windows and Linux installations on the same computer is NTFS because I have large files.

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RAIDguy@reddit

Backup products.

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Ontological_Gap@reddit

I use the read only fuse for forensic analysis

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Tireseas@reddit

Pretty much everyone who has a dual boot or mixed network setup to some degree.

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skojevac7@reddit

Really hope it's more reliable than ntfs3 and faster than ntfs-3g. Ntfs3 corrupted my drives 2 times like 2 or 3 years ago. Moved back to ntfs-3g

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loscrossos@reddit

This is great news... as others have mentioned, the main reason to use NTFS on Linux is for a multiboot setup.

I run a multi-boot system where Windows, Linux (and Mac but thats another story) each have their own dedicated partitions containing only system files. Meanwhile, ALL of my user files and projects live on a shared, central NTFS drive.

For a shared drive, NTFS is realistically your only option:

FAT32 is obsolete, primarily because of its strict 4GB file size limit.
ExFAT is often suggested, but because it isn't a journaled filesystem, it is highly prone to data corruption if your system crashes or loses power (yes. happens to Linux as well).
NTFS is a robust, journaled filesystem. Most importantly, modern Linux drivers (like ntfs-3g or the in-kernel ntfs3) do an excellent job of mounting the drive on boot, supporting symlinks, and translating Windows permissions into Linux ownership and rwx formats so your projects run smoothly on both operating systems

The only issue currently is that you cant fully repair ntfs from Linux. in 95% of the cases its possible but like once a year you have to do this from Windows.

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LordDeath86@reddit

While reading your post, I immediately thought of OpenZFS, and the big gap is obviously its Windows support. But it seems like that port has been very active recently :) https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs/releases

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tadfisher@reddit

Bitlocker makes it a pain in the butt though.

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Particular_Traffic54@reddit

Don't enable it daaaa... oh wait you can't do that if you need encryption

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Dwedit@reddit

Bitlocker turns itself on automatically. Found that out when trying to boot Linux to partition the main volume into two pieces, it said the filesystem was "Bitlocker". It enabled itself despite manage-bde -status C: saying the disk was not encrypted.

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x0wl@reddit

You can mount it with cryptsetup and then it works like any other luks volume.

Source: I do it all the time

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Kurgan_IT@reddit

No, it's not. I have been using USB NTFS drives on Linux since 10 years or more, never had an issue. I have worked on bitlocked usb drives, created on Win11, that you cannot open in older windows versions, and they work just fine on my Mint 21.3 desktop with 5.15 kernel, so it's quite old.

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JockstrapCummies@reddit

Doesn't cryptsetup support opening Bitlocker volumes using Linux kernel encryption primitives since... years?

It's as simple as opening a LUKS volume.

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BossOfTheGame@reddit

The inability to repair NTFS on Linux hit me pretty hard recently. I ended up having to create a Windows VM just so I could mount the disc and fix it. I was relieved that my disk wasn't actually broken. But as someone who wasn't aware of that oddity of the file system, it was a long and winding debugging journey.

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OkAlbatross9889@reddit

Would btrfs be a better solution? I know it’s technically slower, but for the regular joe that doesn’t matter

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Mars_Bear2552@reddit

is there a btrfs driver for windows?

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sleepingonmoon@reddit

There is but it's still data cremation and I don't expect it to become reliable any time soon. I heard gamers are using it on Steam Deck though.

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jcotton42@reddit

SteamOS uses btrfs for root, but ext4 for home and the SD card (I think for casefolding support).

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shaumux@reddit

I've been using it for a few years, and although this would be anecdotal, I have not had any problems so far.

But to be honest I u only use it for reading files, I don't remember when I last wrote to a btrfs drive using winbtrfs.

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Afillatedcarbon@reddit

SteamOS is a spin of arch though?

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sleepingonmoon@reddit

Dual boot is possible.

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OkAlbatross9889@reddit

Yup, winbtrfs. i don't have any experience with it though

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teckcypher@reddit

I also find that recovering deleted or missing files from NTFS is way more reliable than ext4

Also, using ext4 between two systems that don't have the same uids means your files from one system could become inaccesible on the other without root. Sometimes having a fs that cares about file permissions is counterproductive

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henry1679@reddit

Hence why I do rsync -rltv, solves that problem.

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Indolent_Bard@reddit

Well, that and you can't run your games from an NTFS drive without issues.

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necheffa@reddit

It depends. For just sneakernetting some files around on flash media, exFAT is superior.

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redsteakraw@reddit

You can use EXT3/4 and install the windows driver

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xternal7@reddit

it is highly prone to data corruption if your system crashes or loses power (yes. happens to Linux as well).

Especially if you're lazy guy who reboots with reboot -f because you're too lazy to wait for the system to shut down properly.

Yes, I was informed that I shouldn't be doing that, you don't have to.

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zabolekar@reddit

(and Mac but thats another story)

(ALL of my user files and projects live on a shared, central NTFS drive)

How did you configure the Mac for that?

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pan_kotan@reddit

Saying that ntfs-3g or ntfs3 do an excellent job with permissions is taking it waaay too far, but otherwise I agree with your post.

In my experience to have proper permission support on ntfs-3g one has to do a complicated setup that might or might not work properly, and if you provided mount options in fstab, such as uid, gid, dmask, you couldn't use chmod or chown at all.

And as for ntfs3, when I tried it in 2022 (and it looks like nothing changed since then), it simply corrupted files and froze the system during intense IO (while handling permissions properly out of the box --- and that was the reason I actually tried it).

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fuero@reddit

There's ext4fsd: https://github.com/bobranten/Ext4Fsd

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Pitiful-Welcome-399@reddit

i played some games from it on windows and then they became unplayable on linux

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lonmoer@reddit

So I have a Windows Plex server with all the files on ntfs drives. I've been meaning to switch to Linux but I can't afford a 20tb drive to use as temp storage to do the switch. Will I be able to make the switch now with no issues? Last time I tried it messed up the drive and I had to run a recovery program on it.

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redundant78@reddit

you can definitely mount ntfs drives on linux and run plex off them, people have been doing it with ntfs-3g for years. the new in-kernel ntfs3 driver should be even better performance-wise. just make sure you do a clean shutdown of windows first (disable fast startup in power settings, then do a full shutdown) so the filesystem isn't in a dirty state when linux mounts it. and obviously have backups of anything irreplaceable before you try - 20tb of data with no backup is scary regardless of filesystem.

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lonmoer@reddit

Thanks for the tip about fast startup. I definitely didn't do that last time and that's probably why it failed.

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tenchigaeshi@reddit

But how long before I can actually trust it over ntfs-3g? I still don't fully trust NTFS3 even years after release because of the problems people had with it and then of course the whole problem with the maintainers disappearing and then coming back or whatever that was.

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