writing to windoze partition

[Mike McCarty]

Craig White wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-08-08 at 16:15 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
> 
>>Paul Howarth wrote:
>>
>>>On Sun, 2005-08-07 at 16:00 +0200, Liloulinx wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>The Linux NTFS module has very limited write support.
>>>
>>>http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/rel26.html
>>>
>>>Paul.
>>
>>
>>IMO, Linux has limited *read* support. I have tried with
>>two different versions of Linux to read NTFS without
>>success. It appears to copy data correctly, but as it turns
>>out this is not the case in my experience.
> 
> ----
> of course you worked with the developers of the project to help iron out
> the wrinkles on it before you thumbed it down on this list right?

Sarcasm is unbecoming. I did the copies on Saturday of last
weekend and the weekend before that for a friend at her house.
I don't normally have access to the machine unless I go over
there. So I've had all of two days now to get everything together. 
Furthermore, the versions of Linx I tried were not Fedora Core, so
posting here would hardly be the correct forum. Or would it?

And I didn't write some sort of scathing criticism, either. I stated my
experience.

For those with more interest, I found two things occurred, and
have not investigated enough to check for others.

File names changed in case. I mean that a file stored in the NTFS
partition with a name like FRED.EXE might be copied to a name like
FreD.exe. In one case, the same file got copied with different
destination file names in two copies. By that I mean that I did
a copy from NTFS to a FAT32, and then repeated the same copy
(to a different destination) and the same file wound up with two
different munged names. Like FreD.exe in one copy, and FReD.Exe
in the other copy. To clarify further...

Using a Live CD based on Debian

$ mount /mnt/hda1    (FAT32)
$ mount /mnt/hdb1    (NTFS)
$ cd /mnt/hda1
$ md oldd
$ cd oldd
$ cp -pr /mnt/hdb1/* .
.......
$ diff -r /mnt/hdb1 . > diff.out
<6000+ files had different names>

Using a different Live CD, also based on Debian

$ cd ..
$ md newd
$ cd newd
$ cp -pr /mnt/hdb1/* .
$ diff -r /mnt/hdb1 . > diff.out
<6000+ files had different names>

Some of the files in oldd had a different name from
the files in newd. I don't know whether using the
different versions of the Live CD contributed to this,
or whether repeating the copy would have had similar
results using the same CD again. Both of the CDs were
the latest releases of the respective packages. Names
withheld intentionally. I'm not trying to criticize those
packages, especially behind their backs.

Some of the file names were corrupt by having unusual characters
in them. Like 0xC1 and 0xE1. I did diffs of the files, and in the
files where the names were not different, the data were correct.
But over 6,000 files (about half, I guess) had munged names.

When I have a little more spare time, I intend to go over there
and write a script to rename the files with changed names, and
do the diffs again and see whether the data are all correct.

In any case, I don't believe that I am obligated to help solve
the problems, as you seem to suggest. Had I posted a criticism
like "DON'T USE LINUX! IT SUX! IT RUINED MY DATA! IT'S A DOG!"
you'd be justified in replying "Then don't use Linux, and please
go away." I can think of no theory to which I subscribe which
obligates me either to report or to help solve problems.
Presumably you are attempting to shame me into feeling guilty
about not being more civic-minded in some sort of fashion.

Well, if that was your goal, it didn't work.

What I did was pass along what I thought might be some useful
information for a prospective user. Not write a criticism.

Happier?

Mike
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