Can't Write to Terabyte Drive

[rlsj]

For Christmas my wife gave me a Western Digital WB1000N1U standalone terabyte drive that connects via USB. It is in Microsoft's NTFS format. I can read and write it with XP but under the Debian Etch on this laptop I can only read it. When checking its properties (right-click its icon), I learn that it has Read and Execute permissions only. Clicking to add "Write" results in the message, "Couldn't change the permissions of 'HugePort' because it is on a read-only disk"

Well, yeah. The lack of "Write" permission makes it read-only. But is it "read-only" for some other reason?

I installed the packages, "libntfs9," "ntfsdoc" and "ntfsprogs." They didn't help.

I'd like to back up the laptop onto this device. Do I need a new driver?

--Robert Smith

[coopstah13]

can you post the contents of your /etc/fstab ? You should do a couple things, one being install ntfs-3g and also in your fstab you need to mount it with option umask=0 in order to write to it and make mount type ntfs-3g

[HROAdmin26]

I second that - ntfs-3g is the most stable write access to NTFS.

NTFS-3G

[Manchunian]

Debian doesn't write to NTFS by default because it was a bit dangerous before. Now, with ntfs -3g, this is no longer an issue, and you should be able to do it in safety.

[rlsj]

Thanks for your answers.

The command, "df," gave me this among other things:
/dev/sdb1 976760000 413700268 563059732 43% /media/HugePort

and "ls -l /dev/sdb1" returned
brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 8, 17 2008-02-05 14:35 sdb1

I issued "chmod 666 /dev/sdb1" and obtained
brw-rw-rw- 1 root floppy 8, 17 2008-02-05 14:35 sdb1

but it didn't solve the problem.

I cannot get "ntfs-3g" to show up under my Synaptics Package Manager. The "repositories" dialog box is confusing. I may have added "ftp.egr.msu.edu/debian" to the list but I'm not certain. In any case it didn't cause the manager to show ntfs-3g.

Perhaps I don't speak Debian.

--RS

[coopstah13]

post the contents of your sources.lst file, do you have only main repository? or you look in contrib and non-free?

[rlsj]

post the contents of your sources.lst file, do you have only main repository? or you look in contrib and non-free?

cat /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb Index of /debian etch main

deb Index of /debian etch main
deb-src Index of /debian etch main

deb Debian -- Security Information etch/updates main
deb-src Debian -- Security Information etch/updates main

deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb-src ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free

--RS

[rlsj]

I just posted the above and wish to protest. Apparently the software of this forum loves to screw up quoted URLs. In a recent post I tried to correct a URL via the edit function, which merely screwed it even worse.

If you'll recommend a Usenet newsgroup, I'll post my accurate sources.list there.

--RS

[HROAdmin26]

Use the "code" option to quote code so that it's not translated by the forum.

[rlsj]

Use the "code" option to quote code so that it's not translated by the forum.

(Sigh!)

What "code" option?
Where on this web page does it appear?
How do I invoke it to "quote code?"
Do I turn it on or off?
Why must UNIX (Linux) gurus impart just enough information to turn every inquiry into an intelligence-taxing puzzle?