How to mount NTFS filesystem with read/write support on CentOS / RHEL linux

NTFS is a Windows filesystem that Linux distributions and Mac OS X normally do not support. Fortunately, ntfs-3g, developed under Szabolcs Szakacsits, enables both reading and writing NTFS without recompiling. There is a free community edition, and the paid (I think) proprietary version is called Tuxera NTFS. To use an NTFS hard disk on CentOS / RHEL Linux, first install the EPEL repository if it is not already present. The examples below install EPEL for RHEL 6 and CentOS 6. For other CentOS and RHEL versions, find the download URLs at RPM repository for RHEL and CentOS.

[root@ezylinux ~]# rpm -ivh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm
Retrieving http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm
warning: /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.GCQQ4D: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID 0608b895: NOKEY
Preparing...                #################################### [100%]
   1:epel-release           #################################### [100%]

After installing EPEL, use yum install to install fuse-ntfs-3g as shown below.

[root@ezylinux ~]# yum install fuse-ntfs-3g
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit, rhnplugin
This system is not registered with RHN.
Setting up Install Process
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package ntfs-3g.x86_64 2:2011.4.12-3.el6 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=========================================================================
 Package      Arch           Version        Repository    Size
=========================================================================
Installing:
 ntfs-3g      x86_64     2:2011.4.12-3.el6     epel       247 k

Transaction Summary
=========================================================================
Install       1 Package(s)
Upgrade       0 Package(s)

Total download size: 247 k
Installed size: 624 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
ntfs-3g-2011.4.12-3.el6.x86_64.rpm                     | 247 kB     00:00

Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Warning: RPMDB altered outside of yum.
  Installing     : ntfs-3g-2011.4.12-3.el6.x86_64                    1/1

Installed:
  ntfs-3g.x86_64 2:2011.4.12-3.el6

Complete!

Once installed, use mount.ntfs-3g to mount the NTFS filesystem. The example below mounts /dev/sdb1 at /ntfs.

[root@ezylinux ~]# mount.ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /ntfs/

After running that command, check whether it succeeded with mount. A successful mount includes /ntfs in the output.

[root@ezylinux ~]# mount
/dev/sda2 on / type ext4 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,rootcontext="system_u:object_r:tmpfs_t:s0")
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext4 (rw)
/dev/sda5 on /home type ext4 (rw)
/dev/sdb1 on /ntfs type fuseblk (rw,allow_other,blksize=4096)

If mounting fails, try lsmod. If you do not see something like “fuse 66138 2” as below, try modprobe and mount it again.

[root@ezylinux ~]# lsmod |grep fuse
fuse                   66138  2

Example modprobe command:

[root@ezylinux ~]# modprobe -l fuse