NTFS write support

[dsimcha]

Can anyone with personal experience tell me how stable/safe the NTFS write support appears to be in Knoppix 4.0? I have a dual-boot system and want to be able to write to my Windows partition from Linux. This is necessary to make Linux convenient for me to use, since I know that at some point I will have to reboot back into windows. Please describe any relevant experiences with this write support. Did it erase your hard drive, or did it work fine, or somewhere in between?

Thank you.

[ckamin]

Can anyone with personal experience tell me how stable/safe the NTFS write support appears to be in Knoppix 4.0?

I have had DISASTROUS results attempting to write to NTFS partitions using anything other than Micro$oft programs or tools. It is NOT recommended to use Linux to write to NTFS since it can result in disaster. I have written many times to NTFS withour errors, but the few times it failed were not worth the experimentation. My NTFS partition was corrupted on occasion and was not recoverable in a few instances. The tool used was Captive NTFS for the majority of attempts. I did not experience an "erased" hard drive, but if it is rendered inacessable, it just might as well have been.

Look here for information from the developer of Knoppix: http://knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html There is some information at the bottom of the page that reads: *)A free (GPL) NTFS write support is currently under development. Experimental-friendly testers may find the corresponding tools and instructions for accessing rw-mounts of NTFS-Partitions, on the DVD (use at your own risk). A link provided for more information is: http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/

If you were to search through this forum, you might find many people that have experiences similar to mine. There just might be a reason why Knoppix is set by default, not to have write priviledges.

If you need to write to an NTFS partition, you might want to check out Bart PE or Windows PE. One is able to be made by most people with a little computer saavy and Windows Install disk or files. The "Official Version" is unavailable to most people outside of developer or enterprise type environments.

EDIT:
If you are looking to install Knoppix to a hard drive, you would be better served by selecting a distro that is intended to be installed to a hard drive. Knoppix is intended as a LIVE disc and does not always do well as an installed version. Knoppix is based on Debian. Another similar distro to Knoppix is Kanotix and many have had better results installing that distro. If you are dead set on installing Knoppix, look in the appropriate section of the forum and in the documentation link at the top of this page. Also, you might want to think about re-partitioning your drive, or adding another one to the system. You certainly don't want to share an NTFS partition for a dual boot system with Linux if you can even do the install.
END EDIT 10/22/2005 00:43 EDT