Tom,

 

In your spare time, take a look at the user-space file system loadable module "fuse" and how it can be used with the ntfsmount user-space driver to allow full read-write access to NTFS filesystems.

 

I'm sure you know the NTFS support in the Linux kernel has been very limited, even in fairly recent releases.  This situation has been rapidly changing, especially in the user-space filesystem driver ntfsmount.  From what I've been reading, this user-space NTFS filesystem has advanced to where most NTFS filesystem operations are supported and performance is decent.

 

Many of your customers are migrating data from disks currently formatted with NTFS file systems.  It would greatly ease this transition if they could mount the NTFS formatted disk as read-only and copy files from it to the unRaid volumes.

 

The advantage of the fuse loadable module and ntfsmount command is that you could provide them as a downloadable package that could be installed on disk1, loaded as needed, and then removed once finished copying the disk with the NTFS partition to the unRaid reiserfs partition.  They  do not need to be included on the unRaid flash drive where space is at a premium.  The fuse module and ntfsmount package don't even require a kernel rebuild, they just require to be compiled with a compatible set of header files as the current kernel.

 

http://wiki.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=ntfsmount

 

http://fuse.sourceforge.net/

 

How about it Tom?, got an extra hour or so to download fuse/ntfsmount, type "make configure; make" and supply the results as a tar or cpio archive for us to play with after you release your newest kernel?  I'll bet someone will even volunteer to document the commands needed to invoke these commands and migrate data from NTFS disks if the fuse and ntfsmount modules were made available. (once we figure them out ourselves)

 

Joe L.

Joe,

 

Thanks so much for all your research on this capability.  As you know this has been one of the many (ignored) enhancements on my list for the last 9 months.  I would add however that if this all works what the UnRaid software should be is "aware" of an NTFS drive insertion and provide the user with some selectable options in the management console, such as copy files, ignore files and add new disk, copy files plus then add new disk.......!  This could maybe be done with selectable radio buttons or something like that.  This would make the new user migration a snap, and we all know it's a major pain now.

Joe,

 

Thanks so much for all your research on this capability.  As you know this has been one of the many (ignored) enhancements on my list for the last 9 months.  I would add however that if this all works what the UnRaid software should be is "aware" of an NTFS drive insertion and provide the user with some selectable options in the management console, such as copy files, ignore files and add new disk, copy files plus then add new disk.......!  This could maybe be done with selectable radio buttons or something like that.  This would make the new user migration a snap, and we all know it's a major pain now.

Richard,

I agree 1000%, it would make data migration far easier if it was part of the management console but I'd be almost as happy if it was available on the command line at the telnet prompt as  I'm comfortable using command line copy commands.

 

This development of the NTFS user-space "ntfsmount" command as a "fuse" module driver is very recent... the major advances occurring only within the past few months.  It would not have been available 9 months ago for Tom to even try. 

 

Joe L.

Yes, I've been following the linux/NTFS development.  You notice they still say:

 

"Create files and hardlinks. (This will either succeed or it will be refused, 50-50% at the moment. Up to about 10 files can be created in a directory."

 

So it's not really ready for prime-time yet.

 

HOWEVER

 

You will be happy to know that the linux NTFS read-only file system support is built into the next release and seems to work well.  Internally copying from an NTFS hard drive to one of the UnRaid data disks, we get the following rates:

 

• with parity enabled: 20MB/s
  
• without parity enabled: 30MB/s
  

 

So this is faster than what's currently achieved via GigE, but not by orders of magnitude.

Tom, any chance an NTFS drive could be automounted via USB for thsi transfer? That might make this even easier

After the system has booted you should be able to plug in a NTFS-formatted USB hard drive and then via telnet, manually mount the drive and copy it to one of your UnRaid data disks.