Sometimes it may happens in some stage, you may have to access data on a Windows partition, USB device or any similar device. Today most of the modern Linux systems automatically recognize and mount any disks.
However, in some occasions where you may required to configure your system manually to mount ntfs partitions on your Linux system. Specially when you are using dual boot operating environment. Fortunately, this process is not so complicated task its just very fairly straight forward.

This article explains you on how to access or mount Windows XP, Vista NTFS or USB filesystem using the ‘mount‘ command in RHEL/CentOS/Fedora systems.
How to Mount Windows NTFS Partition in Linux
First you need to enable EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) Repository. You may refer the article on how to enable EPEL Repository under RHEL, CentOS and Fedora systems.
To mount any NTFS based filesystem, you need to install a tool called NTFS3G. Before heading up for installation let’s understand NTGS3G.
What is NTFS3G
NTFS3G is an open source cross-platform, stable, GPL licensed, POSIX, NTFS R/W driver used in Linux. It provides safe handling of Windows NTFS file systems viz create, remove, rename, move files, directories, hard links, etc.
Once EPEL is installed and enabled, let’s install ntfs-3g package using the below command with root user.
# yum -y install ntfs-3g
Fuse Install
Next, install and load FUSE driver to mount detected devices with below command. FUSE module is included in the kernel itself in version 2.6.18-164 or newer.
# yum install fuse # modprobe fuse
Identify NTFS Partition
Once fuse module is loaded, type below command to find out NTFS Partitions in Linux.
# fdisk -l
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 21270 7816688 b W95 FAT32
Mount NTFS partition
First create a mount point to mount the NTFS partition.
# mkdir /mnt/nts
Simply run the following command to mount the partition. Replace sda1 with your actual partition found.
# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/nts
Once it’s mounted on /mnt/ntfs, you may use regular Linux ls -l command to list the content of mounted filesystem.
[[email protected] ntfs]# ls -l total 27328 drwx------. 2 root root 16384 Sep 2 19:37 Cert drwx------. 20 root root 16384 Aug 24 2011 club_application drwx------. 6 root root 16384 Aug 11 15:37 docs drwx------. 7 root root 16384 Jul 31 2012 Downloads drwx------. 2 root root 16384 Dec 10 20:28 images -rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 31744 Jan 18 00:29 Material List.doc
If you want to make mount point permanent at the boot time, then simple add the following line at the end of /etc/fstab file. This will remain as permanent.
/dev/sda1 /mnt/usb ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
Umount NTFS Partition
Simply, use the following command to unmount the mounted partition.
# umount /mnt/usb
Read Also : How to Mount ISO Images in Linux
Unless you absolutely MUST struggle with RHEL/Centos … go for Mint. Takes out 99% of this type of struggles.
Error mounting /dev/sdb1 at /run/media/client2/MR.OPTIMUS: Command-line `mount -t “ntfs” -o “uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=0077,fmask=0177” “/dev/sdb1” “/run/media/client2/MR.OPTIMUS”‘ exited with non-zero exit status 13: $MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0).
Failed to mount ‘/dev/sdb1’: Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it’s a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the ‘dmraid’ documentation
for more details.
How do I overcome this problem. It occurs during 2nd time to make HDD as ntfs to access through the centos 7 platform.
I have the same problem. Anyone help?
hi just got an msg while
This system is not registered with RHN.
while doing the instalation
Follow below guid to register your system with Red Hat Network (RHN).
https://access.redhat.com/site/solutions/8036
Hello!
Then i power off my usb hdd and connect again name of device has been changed (from sda1 to, example, sdb1). Why this happen?
CentOS 6.
My english is a little.
Thanks a lot, i solved my problem in Centos 6.
how to open .rar files
Here, is the complete guide on How to Open RAR files in Linux.
Hello
Thank you, after hours googling found your site and I installed my external usb hard drive. Very usefull guide.
Thanks.
But I don’t get any such files.
[[email protected] CVU_11.2.0.1.0_basu]# cd /etc/yum.repos.d
[[email protected] yum.repos.d]# ls -l
total 24
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 954 Aug 11 2010 epel.repo
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 1054 Aug 11 2010 epel-testing.repo
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 561 Mar 10 2010 rhel-debuginfo.repo
Please help.
Hi,
Thanks for sharing such a helpful guide to mount NTFS filesystem in linux. Its so clear and easy to understand.
I’m facing one more issue. I’ve enabled EPEL and installed NTFS3G. But not able to get fuse installed. I’m getting below error-
[[email protected] etc]# yum install fuse
Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security
This system is not registered with RHN.
RHN support will be disabled.
Setting up Install Process
No package fuse available.
Nothing to do
[[email protected] etc]# uname -a
Linux localhost2.localdomain2 2.6.18-194.el5 #1 SMP Tue Mar 16 21:52:39 EDT 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
I need it badly, please help.
Thanks in advance.!
You need to enable beta repo by modifying /etc/yum.repos.d/rhel-beta.repo file.
Make sure you set enable=1 and give a try again.
Hi Ravi,
I could successfully install ntfs-3g in CentOS 6.4 and mount NTFS partitions.
The method that worked for me was slighly different than yours.
I used wget to download the “.tgz” archive directly from Tuxera.com and uncompressed it. Then, I downloaded the gcc compiler to build ntfs-3g from the sources using the well known “./configure”, “make”, “make install” sequence.
However, the NTFS partitions are still not listed as drives in CentOS GUI.
Hence, I cannot “drag and drop” files from them to the CD/DVD burner.
Any idea how to make NTFS partitions displayed in the GUI ?
Regards.
Dear friend ,
can you be please help me ,, My wireless is not displaying in the net work manager applet. machin- Dell inspiron 15 3521 wireless card – atheros. OS Centos 6.2
Probably you need to install the drivers, check out your manufactures website or simply google.