Normally Linux systems can only read from Windows NTFS partitions, but not write to them which can be very annoying if you have to work with Linux and Windows systems. This is where ntfs-3g comes into play. ntfs-3g is an open source, freely available NTFS driver for Linux with read and write support. This tutorial shows how to use ntfs-3g on a Fedora 7 desktop to read from and write to Windows NTFS drives and partitions.

This document comes without warranty of any kind! I want to say that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

Preliminary Note
I have tried this on a Fedora 7 desktop with an external NTFS USB hard drive.

Using ntfs-3g
Fortunately, Fedora 7 comes with ntfs-3g preinstalled, so we can start to use it right away without the need to install or configure anything. So while you’re sitting in front of your Fedora 7 desktop, plug in your external NTFS drive and switch it on.

This means that we can at least read from the NTFS drive, but of course we want to know if the write support is working. To test this, you can go to any subfolder (or stay in the root folder) of the NTFS drive, right-click on the free space, and select Create Folder (you could as well select Create Document):

After a few seconds (if nothing goes wrong), you should see a desktop icon for your NTFS drive (mine is called BACKUP), and a file explorer window should come up with the contents of the drive:

Type in the name of the new folder. If the folder is created without errors, this means that write support is working for our NTFS drive!

Before you switch off/disconnect your NTFS drive from your Fedora system, you must unmount it (or you risk filesystem damage!). To do this, right-click on the drive’s desktop icon and select Unmount Volume:

After the drive’s desktop icon has disappeared, you can unplug and switch off the drive.
Troubleshooting

If you plug in your NTFS drive, and it doesn’t get mounted, but you see an error message saying something like:

Cannot mount volume.
Unable to mount the volume 'BACKUP'.
Volume is scheduled for check. Please boot into Windows TWICE, or use the 'force' mount option. For example type on the command line:
mount -t ntfs-3g/dev/sdb1 /media/BACKUP -o force
Or add the option to the relevant row in the /etc/fstab file:
/dev/sdb1 /media/BACKUP ntfs-3g defaults,force 0 0


this means that the NTFS drive wasn’t safely removed from your Windows system before.

To fix this, we must boot into our Windows system again and plug in our NTFS drive. In the Windows Explorer, right-click on the drive and select Properties:

Then go to the Extras tab and select to check the drive for errors (it’s the first button saying Jetzt prüfen… in this screenshot (I got a German Windows…)):

Select the option to automatically correct filesystem errors (Dateisystemfehler automatisch korrigieren):

The drive is now being checked:

Click on OK afterwards:

Afterwards, you must safely remove the drive by clicking on the green arrow in the task bar. You should always use this option from now on instead of simply unplugging the drive, because if you simply unplug the drive, you’ll get the Cannot mount volume error again in Fedora.

A few seconds after you’ve selected to safely remove the drive, Windows tells you that the drive can now be disconnected:

Afterwards, you can connect the drive to your Fedora system, and it should now be mounted without errors.

Links
ntfs-3g: http://www.ntfs-3g.org