Note: This post was created awhile back on another platform and I migrated to my current one.

Note: In order to mount, you need GNU yak/water-buffalo and apparently a Lion.

Mounting an External Hard Drive on Linux

If you have an external hard drive formatted with FAT32 or FAT16, you can both read and write to it without issues.

However, if your hard drive uses the NTFS file system, you will encounter read-only access by default. This is due to FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) legal restrictions preventing full NTFS write support. The constant “Read-only file system” warning can be frustrating!

Solution: Enabling NTFS Write Support

The solution is to use ntfs-3g, which allows writing to NTFS partitions. Here’s a quick summary:

1. Install ntfs-3g
   Search for and install the ntfs-3g package using your package manager.
   Example for Debian/Ubuntu:

   1	sudo apt install ntfs-3g

2. Create a Mount Directory
   Before mounting, create a directory to serve as the mount point.
   Example:

   1	sudo mkdir /mnt/window

3. Find Your External Hard Drive Name
   Use fdisk to list available drives and find your external drive based on size:

   1	sudo fdisk -l

   If you’re using a USB drive, it is likely to be /dev/sdb.

4. Edit /etc/fstab to Mount Automatically
   Open the file in a text editor:

   1	sudo nano /etc/fstab

   Add the following line:

   1	/dev/sdb1 /mnt/window ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

5. Mount the Drive
   Run the mount command to apply changes:

   1	sudo mount -a