PC Hacks

Hack #89. Access NTFS Files from Other Operating Systems

Read files on an NTFS partition from a non-NTFS operating system with these free tools.

The folks at Sysinternals have created a series of utilities that allow us to access files and program in NTFS partitions from non-NTFS operating systems. Two of them, NTFSDOS and NTFSWIN98, are free to download from http://www.sysinternals.com. NTFSDOS is intended for use under DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95, and NTFSWIN98 is used for Windows 98 and Me. To access files on an NTFS volume, you'll need a user account and password to access any secured NTFS partitions, but you won't have to boot up the entire NT/2000 or XP operating system to do it.

If you require write access to files in an NTFS partition, you will need to purchase professional versions of these programs or Sysinternal's Administrator's Pak.

You can access NTFS from most current versions of Linux simply by mounting the NTFS filesystem as root (the -o ro option specifies read-only mode):

#
mount -o ro /dev/hda1 /mnt # mount
| grep ntfs /dev/hda1 on /mnt type ntfs (ro) debian:~#
ls -l /mnt/boot.ini -r-------- 1 root root 230
Aug 8 17:32 /mnt/boot.ini

In some cases, you may need to load the NTFS module first:

#
modprobe -v ntfs insmod
/lib/modules/2.6.6-local/kernel/fs/ntfs/ntfs.ko

If the NTFS module is unavailable (you'll see the error message "FATAL: Module ntfs not found"), you'll need to obtain a newer kernel or download (see http://www.kernel.org), compile, and install one, ...