Mounting NTFS in Linux: How to mount and access Windows files stored on an NTFS partition from Linux. In the following segment, I explain how to gain access to a Windows partition and filesystem using Linux.
Reading or accessing NTFS partitions in Linux can be important for many reasons. Some users repair Windows operating environments using Linux, while others use a dual boot operating environment and would like to have access to their Windows file system.
The good news is that mounting NTFS on Linux is not very complicated. As a matter of fact, for those using a Linux version derived from Debian, (I.E. Ubuntu, Knoppix, etc) the entire process can be accomplished in just a matter of minutes.
Mounting NTFS in Linux | Accessing Windows Files
How to use Linux to mount an NTFS filesystem and gain access to files on a Windows partition:
- Open a terminal: Ctrl + Alt + x
- To become root user, type or copy and paste the following, then press Enter
sudo su
- Now use fdisk to locate your Windows NTFS partition:
fdisk -l
(and make note of which partition contains the NTFS file system)
- To create a directory to use for mounting the NTFS partition:
mkdir /media/windows
- Next, to mount the NTFS filesystem in Linux:
(replacing hdx1 with your actual partition found in step two. For example hda1, hdb2, sda1, etc.)mount /dev/hdx1 /media/windows/ -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222
- To move to the Windows directory:
cd /media/windows
- Finally, to list the files on the NTFS partition:
ls
Additional Note: Alternately, you can navigate to the media/windows directory outside of terminal to view and access the NTFS files.
When you want to unmount the Windows NTFS partition, from the terminal simply use:
umount /media/windows/
That's all there is to Mounting NTFS in Linux!