Captive NTFS

Captive NTFS is an open-source project within the Linux programming community, started by Jan Kratochvil, to create a "software wrapper" around the original Microsoft Windows NTFS file system driver using parts of ReactOS code. By taking this approach captive NTFS aims to provide safe write support to NTFS partitions.

Until the release of ntfs-3g, it was the only free NTFS driver with full write support.

Captive NTFS requires NTFS.SYS which cannot be distributed for legal reasons. It can either be obtained from an installed Windows system (which most computers with NTFS partitions are likely to have) or extracted from certain Microsoft service packs.

On January 26 2006 Jan Kratochvil released version 1.1.7 of his package. This version restores compatibility with recent Linux kernels by replacing the obsolete LUFS (Linux Userland File System) module with FUSE (File System in Userspace), which as of Linux 2.6.14 has been included into the official Linux kernel.

Alternatives

As of early 2007, Captive NTFS is no longer the only safe and free read/write NTFS solution for Linux. NTFS-3G is a FUSE-based driver with almost complete NTFS write support, [NTFS-3G supports most operations for writing files: files of any size can be safely created, modified, renamed, moved, or deleted on NTFS partitions, except compressed and encrypted files. Experimental support to modify access control lists and permissions is [http://perso.orange.fr/b.andre/security.html available] .] which, unlike Captive NTFS, does not require any third-party proprietary software to function.

Notes and references

External links

* [http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/ Jan Kratochvil's Captive NTFS home page]
* [http://www.ntfs-3g.org NTFS-3G project]
* [http://www.linux-ntfs.org/ The original Linux-NTFS project]
* [http://fuse.sourceforge.net/ FUSE - File System in Userspace]