Linux NTFS

This page is part of the Linux Disk Management pages.

Mounting

References

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MountingWindowsPartitions/ThirdPartyNTFS3G
• http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1072025.html

Mounting an NTFS partition using file /etc/fstab

• First get the UUID of the partition to mount

sudo blkid

• Edit /etc/fstab accordingly:

UUID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX /media/windows ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 1

Note that gid=46 refers to plugdev group.

• Now the partition can be mounted with:

sudo mount /media/windows

Mounting a NTFS partition using command mount

• To mount an NTFS partition /dev/sda1 to mount point /media/windows:

sudo mkdir /media/windows
sudo chgrp plugdev /media/windows
sudo mount -t ntfs -o defaults,umask=007,gid=46 /dev/sda1 /media/windows

NTFSResize

Change the size of an existing NTFS partition

$ fdisk -l /dev/sda                               # List information on partitions on /dev/sda
$ ntfsresize --info /dev/sda1
$ ntfsresize --no-action --size 20152M /dev/sda1  # Testing
$ ntfsresize --no-action --size 20151M /dev/sda1  # Testing
$ ntfsresize --size 20151M /dev/sda1
$ ntfsresize --size 20000M /dev/sda1

NTFSClone

Backup an NTFS partition to an image file

sudo ntfsclone --save-image -o - /dev/sda1 | gzip -c > backup-20090908.img.gz

Restore an NTFS partition from an image file

gzip -d -c backup-20090908.img.gz | sudo ntfsclone --restore-image --overwrite /dev/sda1 -

Convert an image file to a file, and mount it

gzip -d -c backup-20090908.img.gz | sudo ntfsclone --restore-image --overwrite backup.img -
mount -t ntfs -o loop backup.ntfs /mnt/ntfsclone

! bug ! If you get an error Failed to read last sector (...): Invalid argument, it is probably because the size of the image volume created by ntfsclone does not match the Image device size (the last cluster is incomplete). To fix this bug, simply pad the file with zeroes as necessary. Let's assume the following output for ntfsclone:

...
Cluster size           : 4096 bytes
Image volume size      : 48057282560 bytes (48058 MB)
Image device size      : 48057286656 bytes
...

However the file generated by ntfsclone is smaller than the original device size:

-rw------- 1 root     root     48057283072 2010-03-26 00:07 e6500.ntfs

We see that 3584 bytes are missing. Simply pad the file:

dd if=/dev/zero bs=3584 count=1 >> e6500ntfs
mount -t ntfs -o loop backup.ntfs /mnt/ntfsclone