[Software] writing data to NTFS partition in Unix and Linux to share with others can be destructive and risky.

[rupeshforu3]

Hi I am Rupesh from India and I brought a new desktop pc with ryzen 5500GT cpu and Asus prime b450 motherboard. I installed Linux freebsd along with windows 11 and everything is working fine except I can't copy files properly to NTFS partition and share those files with others or other computers.

I love using unix and Linux operating systems and I have the habit of sharing files present in Unix and Linux operating systems with other people and even I use those files outside Linux operating systems I mean I use them in windows 11 operating system.

In Linux operating system I have the habit of downloading youtube videos and compress them to av1 codec and finally move the compressed files to NTFS partition or file system for backup or to view those videos in windows. I have the habit of downloading mp3 music files from websites and transfer them to NTFS partition or file system.

Suppose I have 1000 files which I want to transfer them to NTFS partition or file system and moved them to NTFS partition using Nautilus file manager and after booting windows 11 and try to open the moved folder I am getting error as folder or directory inaccessible. Now inorder to overcome this problem I may issue the following command

chkdsk d: /f /x

This command checks for file system errors and after that when I try to open the moved folder I am able to access the particular folder but unfortunately I am able to see only 800 files and so the remaining 200 files are lost.

The second issue is suppose now I have downloaded 1000 files and transferred those files to NTFS partition and after two to three months I have decided to install my present Linux operating system from the beginning and I have installed it from the beginning and after that I have mounted the same NTFS partition in file manager and succeeded and I am able to write new files but if I want to move the previously copied or moved 1000 files from NTFS partition to my home folder I can't.

If I continuously use the same Linux operating system for years without installing freshly from the beginning there's no problem but if I install it freshly then I can't move files from NTFS to my home folder.

Today I have installed freebsd operating system and in Linux operating system I have copied 100 files to NTFS partition and after booting into freebsd I can't move those particular 100 files from NTFS partition to my home folder.

I can't move means when I open any file manager and right click on the particular folder which is problematic I can't see option cut.

Copying or moving data between Linux operating systems of other computers is easy through Linux native partitions like xfs or ext4. And even you or me can't delete a file or folder which was copied from other computers and inorder to delete it I must open a terminal emulator and gain super user permissions and navigate to the directory and finally issue the following commands to delete them permanently

rm -rf
rmdir

I think that lots of security information is added to the copied or moved files and directories when they are copied to mounted partitions.

Previously I lost 30 gb data by moving files from Linux local xfs file system to NTFS partition. Today I lost 2 gb data by moving data from freebsd ufs2 file system to NTFS partition.

I know that you are getting annoyed through my explanation and so I will illustrate what's going on as below

Today we can create a zip file through compressing a folder and add security to it by adding password to it and you have distributed to other people without providing password and finally they can't access it.

The same thing is happening in the present situation also I have some files in my unix system and I have copied them to NTFS partition or file system but unfortunately the operating system copied files along with user credentials like username or password uid etc.,.

I or other people have tried to mount the same NTFS partition in another unix system but can't move or delete those files because username or password uid are invalid.

Another issue is suppose in my NTFS partition or file system I have 1000 files and transferred those files to my unix or Linux system and opened a terminal emulator and after that I have navigated to the concerned directory on which transferred files are present and issue list command I am getting unknown ASCII characters in the terminal emulator which are not part of the file names.

Many people and all of you mostly work in Unix or Linux systems only but don't try to transfer files to and from NTFS partitions but I frequently use both systems. So you have not noticed any such errors.

You can suggest to turn off hibernation in windows 11 and I have already done even no use.

Please try to rectify this particular problem ie., moving files to NTFS partition without any security information. If you rectify this issue many people will be benefited.

Regards,
Rupesh.

[sunrat]

BSD is not Linux. What operating system are you using?

If you share an NTFS drive with Windows you need to disable Fast Startup in Windows.

[rupeshforu3]

Yes I know BSD is not Linux but I have tried to share files between Linux and freebsd through NTFS and failed.

So I used the word freebsd in some places.

[dilberts_left_nut]

Works fine for me.

[rupeshforu3]

Others suggested to use exfat partition while sharing data between various operating systems and so I have created exfat partition and tried to share data between them using exfat.

At present everything thing is working fine and no user credentials are copied along with files or folders.

I can't understand what is the need of copying user credentials along with files or folders when NTFS partition is used as destination.

Again I am not going to use NTFS partition along with Linux because it is problematic.

If you want proofs of what I said previously I am ready to provide screenshots of this issue.

[rupeshforu3]

One of the experienced person suggested as follows.

I ran into similar problems when I tried to use rsync to backup my Linux system to an NTFS drive. It doesn't work.

The underlying problem you are facing is the fundamental incompatibility between NTFS (and Windows file systems in general) and Linux.
The NTFS file system has restrictions on what is a valid file name. Characters like ':' (colon) are not acceptable, for example.
Linux allows any character, except / and null, to be used in file names.

You also seem to be encountering permission issues. I am not familiar with the workings, so I will leave that for someone else to explain.

You might also be experiencing some timing issues. It is possible for the copy command to complete while there is still a substantial amount of data still in buffers waiting to be written. You need to ensure the copy has really completed before unmounting or unplugging the drive.

There is no way the the NTFS file system can be fixed as doing so would break Windows compatibility.

I would suggest giving up on using NTFS from Linux.
Change to a native Linux file system and use Samba to allow Windows machines access to the data.