Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Mount An External Ntfs File System On Redhat Linux 5

You can mount an NTFS filesystem stored on an external device.


Red Hat is a company that distributes Linux, targeting the commercial market. Like every Linux distribution in the market, Red Hat supports multiple file systems. NTFS is a file system originally created by Microsoft for use with Windows NT and subsequent versions; despite its not being a Linux file system, Red Hat has built-in support for accessing data stored on an NTFS volume. You can mount an NTFS file system resident on an external device using your Red Hat computer.


Instructions


1. Log in to the Linux computer as user "root."


2. Click on "Applications" on the taskbar at the top of the graphical desktop, then select "Terminal." A new Terminal window will come up.


3. Connect the external drive to the computer, then wait a few seconds.


4. Type the following command into the Terminal:


dmesg


Press "Enter." Look at the last few lines of the output; they will consist of several informative messages stating that a new device (the external drive you just plugged in) has been recognized by Red Hat. Make a note of the name of the drive; it will have the form "dev/sd" followed by a letter (e.g., "/dev/sda").


5. Type the following command into the Terminal:


fdisk -l /dev/sda


Replace "/dev/sda" by the name of the external drive from Step 4. Press "Enter." Look for the partition labeled "Windows" in the output of fdisk; that is the external NTFS file system you want to mount on Red Hat.


6. Type the following commands into the Terminal:


mkdir -p /mnt/extNTFS


mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/extNTFS


Replace "3" by the number of the NTFS partition from Step 5. Press "Enter." At that point, all files and folders in the external NTFS file system will be accessible from Red Hat under the "/mnt/extNTFS" mount point.







Tags: file system, NTFS file system, external drive, into Terminal, NTFS file