converting NTFS drive

[James Wilkinson]

Efthym wrote:
> I thought that NTFS write support exited the "dangerous" phase and is  
> considered "stable". Haven't tried it myself though.

Only for over-writing all or part of a file without changing its size or
metadata.

The appropriate help line in the 2.6.13 kernel configuration says:
      This enables the partial, but safe, write support in the NTFS driver.

      The only supported operation is overwriting existing files, without
      changing the file length.  No file or directory creation, deletion or
      renaming is possible.  Note only non-resident files can be written to
      so you may find that some very small files (<500 bytes or so) cannot
      be written to.

      While we cannot guarantee that it will not damage any data, we have
      so far not received a single report where the driver would have
      damaged someones data so we assume it is perfectly safe to use.

      Note:  While write support is safe in this version (a rewrite from
      scratch of the NTFS support), it should be noted that the old NTFS
      write support, included in Linux 2.5.10 and before (since 1997),
      is not safe.

      This is currently useful with TopologiLinux.  TopologiLinux is run
      on top of any DOS/Microsoft Windows system without partitioning your
      hard disk.  Unlike other Linux distributions TopologiLinux does not
      need its own partition.  For more information see
      <http://topologi-linux.sourceforge.net/>

      It is perfectly safe to say N here.

Hope this helps,

James.

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