NTFS-3G

NTFS - 3G is a on a docking FUSE driver for the NTFS file system for Linux and other operating systems on which FUSE is available. Developed and marketed NTFS-3G is used today by Tuxera whose CTO Szabolcs Szakacsits has contributed a large part to the development of the driver. The Finnish company provides the file system driver in a dual licensing system with the free version is also under a proprietary license for companies.

NTFS-3G allows full read and write access, currently, with the exception of encrypted files as well as create and modify compressed files. Access and property rights can be set globally for the mount only when mounting the filesystem. After extensive testing, the driver is considered stable.

Development

Already with the Linux kernel 1.2.74 from 1995 there was a driver for the NTFS file system, which, however, offered only limited read access to NTFS file systems. In 2000, Anton Altaparmakov launched the Linux - NTFS project on SourceForge, which provided in addition to a free NTFS program library and adequate file system tools ( such as fsck ) also a driver for the Linux kernel. This was incorporated in 2002 in the developer kernel 2.5.11 and ported in addition to the then stable kernel 2.4.18.

The file system utilities for the NTFS file system are housed in the ntfsprogs package, which also contains the FUSE file system driver ntfsmount. FUSE stands for " Filesystem in Userspace " file system in user mode. In unprivileged mode, the file system driver when it is running a bit slower, but is more flexible to use and thanks to the availability of FUSE on numerous platforms also easily portable in many respects.

The developer Szabolcs Szakacsits finally realized in 2006 located in beta FUSE driver before, which should no longer have the well-known Linux - NTFS restrictions. For the first time it was possible to perform any file operations from Linux on an NTFS file system. After successful development, finally, the first stable release as NTFS - 3G version 1.0 was announced on 21 February 2007.

According to the company, Tuxera Ltd. was founded in 2008 by Szabolcs Szakacsits because more and more inquiries from well-known companies in integrating into their products made ​​this step necessary. On its website, the company offers individually tailored versions as Tuxera NTFS for Embedded Systems.

End of August 2009 it was announced that Tuxera has entered into a cooperation with Microsoft, which includes an agreement on intellectual property. Because Microsoft thus also allowed insight into the specification of exFAT, NTFS Tuxera was next to develop the driver Tuxera exFAT for Embedded Systems, which is available for commercial customers.

Properties

NTFS 3G has now been ported to a variety of operating systems. Since the driver seated on FUSE, it runs on almost all operating systems for which FUSE is also available themselves.

The stable version thus provides sufficient access to files on an NTFS file system.

If write access is performed to the file system while it is incorporated under a different operating system (for example, when using Hibernate mode or the Quick Launch feature of Windows 8), there is a risk of data loss because the other operating system with any information about the state all mounted file systems in memory reserves. Therefore Current versions of NTFS-3G bind the file system as read-only by default when a Windows detects active Quick Start or Sleep state.

In the development branch "Advanced Features" experimental features in NTFS-3G will however tested and improved with the help of their users and debugged. Once these features are considered to be stable, they will be released for the stable version.

These are currently:

  • Support of access and property rights according to the POSIX rules interoperable with Windows.
  • POSIX ACLs (Access Control Lists)
  • " Junction points" and symbolic links are represented as symbolic links
  • Frequently accessed data is stored in a cache
  • The allocation of memory for fragmented and sparse files has been improved
  • Access to Windows and NTFS - specific attributes such as " Hidden" or "system" is possible over the so-called "extended attributes".
  • When you create or modify files, the archive bit is set.
  • Compression: Sequential write compressed files is supported. ( Exception: sparse files )
  • The last trial versions allow you to read and set the 8.3 DOS file name.
  • Tools for helping translation of Windows users and user groups in POSIX users and groups as well as for checking the integrity of the data for access and property rights

The use of these advanced features is documented in detail on the website of these extensions.

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