Force Mounting NTFS Filesystem

I recently upgraded Ubuntu from Gusty to Hardy, it did not go very smoothly and I faced some issues and problems. NTFS mounting issue was the one I just realised. If you missed my previous article about the list of problems I encountered post upgrade, please check Ubuntu Hardy Upgrade Problems. During fixing of those problems, I don’t know what I did wrong, but I couldn’t login to Windows partition anymore. Acutally, Windows boots and at the point of login, all mouse and keyboard are not functioning ( there is no response ). That’s all right, I don’t use Windows much at work anyway, just a backup system to use when Ubuntu goes wrong. When I boot back to Ubuntu Hardy, seems like Ubuntu refuses to mount the windows NTFS partition for some bizarre reason. After some googling, I found the reason and some solutions to it. Solution 1 You can force mount the NTFS file system either from command line ( once off for current session )

[email protected]$ mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 -o force

Or update the fstab file for permanent effect, open file

[email protected]$ sudo vim /etc/fstab

You will see something like the following:

1 # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
2 #
3 #  -- This file has been automaticly generated by ntfs-config --
4 #
5 #
6
7 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
8 # Entry for /dev/sda2 :
9 UUID=e4e1f54c-ca68-4a13-8657-782c0e86662f / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
10 # Entry for /dev/sda1 :
11 UUID=0A84C83C84C82BCF /media/sda1 ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_AU.UTF-8 0 1
12 # Entry for /dev/sda3 :
13 UUID=05e93cca-26af-41f4-bc2a-08d0ea8a0f8f none swap sw 0 0
14 /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

Add “force” to the options colomn:

UUID=0A84C83C84C82BCF /media/sda1 ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_AU.UTF-8,force 0 1

Now after you restart your system, the NTFS will be forcely mounted automatically. Solution 2 If you don’t like to do it manually, you can certainly use a GUI application to do the job for you, install ntfs-config:

[email protected]$ sudo apt-get install ntfs-config

The “NTFS Configuration Tool” will be installed under System menu, launch it and you will see [img=505] Check the options you would like and click “OK” All should work. Hope those helps.