Mount windows NTFS partitions with ntfs3 drivers instead of ntfs-3g.

Introduction

Initially, the Linux kernel did not support NTFS natively. The NTFS-3G from Tuxera is the current mainstream solution, but there are many small problems in actual use. NTFS-3G is a file system that imitates NTFS support and is implemented in the user layer with the help of the Linux user space file system FUSE module. The access logic code to NTFS is implemented in the user layer code.

The main problem with using NTFS on Linux before NTFS3 was the lack of stable and fully functional read/write support.

In 2020, Paragon Software made a surprising decision: try to Mainline the previously only commercial NTFS3 driver. Finally Linux Kernel 5.15 incorporates the NTFS3 kernel driver provided by Paragon, which has higher performance and more features.

• This driver implements read/write support for normal, sparse, and compressed files in the NTFS file system.

• Support local log playback.

• NFS export of mounted NTFS volumes is supported.

• Extended attributes are supported. Predefined extended properties:

  • system.ntfs_security gets/sets security

    Keywords: SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR_RELATIVE

  • system.ntfs_attrib gets/sets ntfs file/dir attributes.

  Note: This item applies to empty files, allowing to switch the type between sparse (0x200), compressed (0x800) and normal.

mount

The filesystem type used when mounting is ntfs3.

Mount manually

Manually mount using the command:

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 # mount -t ntfs3 /dev/sdxY /mnt

-t indicates the file system type, /dev/sdxY is the path of your partition, which can be viewed with the lsblk command. /mnt is the folder to mount to.

Auto mount at boot

Edit the /etc/fstab file and add the line:

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 UUID =**** /data ntfs3 iocharset =utf8,umask=0,prealloc 0 0

Where UUID=**** is the UUID of the specified partition. The benefit of using UUID is that they are independent of disk order. If you change the order of your storage devices in the BIOS, or if you reseat the storage devices, or because some BIOSes may randomly change the order of the storage devices, then using UUID will be more efficient. UUID can be viewed using the blkid command.

/data is the mount location. The location for this example is /data you need to create this folder in advance.

The following options are all mount parameters. For details, please refer to the following introduction.

The last two 0 0 indicate whether to backup and whether to check. 0 0 means do not backup, do not check.

mount parameters

Advantages of NTFS3

NTFS3 is a kernel-mode driver, and ntfs3 is much better than nfts-3g in terms of speed and load.

Many netizens have done the test:

• Simple performance test of ntfs-3g with Linux 5.15+ ntfs3 driver

• Linux 5.15 kernel NTFS3 performance evaluation

In addition to better performance, NTFS3 also supports features such as mount user and file permission management. For specific usage, you can learn the usage of gid, uid and umask by yourself.

In addition, NTFS3 also supports the prealloc of NTFS, which can greatly reduce the generation of file fragmentation.

Problems with unmaintained NTFS3 drivers

Since the driver was finally mainlined in Linux 5.15 in 2021, so far, in nearly a year, no major bug fixes have been sent to the driver.

It has been speculated that the drive’s defender, Konstantin Komarov, was in Russia and was affected by the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Subsequently, many programmers, including Linus Torvalds, expressed concern and willingness to contribute.

Now, we’re seeing Konstantin Komarov from Paragon Software re-active on the kernel mailing list after leaving for a break and other business. Komarov submitted a batch of NTFS3 fixes for the merge window for Linux 5.19 on June 3, 2022.

I believe that ntfs3 will get better and better in the future. And at present, nfts3 is already the best NTFS driver in Linux, I think you might as well try it.