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this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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I have windows PC with 6 drives, mostly SSD and on HDD that I assume are all NTFS. Two of the drives are nvme(?) attached to the mobo, and I only have one mobo with nvme slots. I have a number of older boards that top out at SATA connections.
If I install Linux Mint, can I format one nvme drive with whatever the current preferred linux formatting is, install Mint, and move the files from the other drives around as I format each one?
Or do I need to move all the data I want to keep to SATA drives, put them in a different windows box, and then copy them over using a network connection?
It's been a while and I'm guessing my lack of finding an answer means linux still doesn't work with NTFS enough to do what I'm thinking of.
You can freely manipulate NTFS in Linux. Just make sure your distribution has, after kernel >=5.15, enabled it, otherwise you may need to install the ntfs-eg driver. Other than that, Ach Wiki has info that may help you on any distro:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NTFS
I have done something similar to what you want to do, just needed the ntfs-3g driver installed and "Disks" (gnome disks) application would mount/read/write the disks as usual
I was read/writing on NTFS partitions back in 2004, so your information that Linux doesn't work with NTFS is at least 20 years old.
You can test it from a live usb, generally ntfs works okay though.
linux can read and write ntfs, edit partition tables and resize ntfs partitions
you could (theoretically, do not do this!) free up 8gb of space on your ssd in windows, defragment it then boot a linux installer and use it to shrink the ntfs partition and install ilnux in that 8gb.
It depends on exactly how you plan to do things. The Linux kernel supports reading NTFS but not writing to it. I’m not sure exactly how full your drives are, but you might be able to consolidate some before installing Linux.
There are a couple utilities that let your mount an NTFS file system for read & write, but I wouldn’t trust them for important data.
Edit: This is outdated as of like 2021. Don’t listen to me
That's not true. Since kernel 5.15, Linux uses the new NTFS3 driver, which supports both read and write. And performance wise it's much better than the old ntfs-3g FUSE driver, and it's also arguably better in stability too, since at least kernel 6.2.
Personally though, I'd recommend being on 6.8+ if you're going to use NTFS seriously, or at the very least, 6.2 (as 6.2 introduces the mount options
windows_namesandnocase). @snooggums@midwest.socialToday I learned. Cunningham’s law strikes again I guess
As long as I can read from the second nvme drive I have enough total space to easily shuffle around.
My issue was that I couldn't fit everything onto just the SSDs at the same time.
Reading works great! If you need to mount the drive manually (IIRC Mint should do this for you) you’ll need to specify that it’s NTFS instead of it automatically detecting the file system but other than that it’s just plug and play
Linux NTFS support is pretty good. The kernel drivers do all the basics, but you may still want the ntfs-3g driver installed for some of its tools. Ntfsfix has saved me before and I think it’s from the ntfs-3g package