# [SOLVED] Cannot mount external harddrive read-write

## mhelvens

Hi all,

I have a Toshiba external USB harddrive here, and for some reason I can only mount it read-only. Even when I'm root and using the -w mount option. When trying to change anything after mount (mv, chmod, etc.) it says it's a read-only filesystem. However, on an old Gentoo laptop (tragically running Vista now), there certainly was read-write access.

The reason I need linux access to this device is that at one time I put files on there with a colon ( :Smile:  in the filename. Because of the colon, Windows refuses to touch them, and I need some way to remove the offending characters. So read-write access on my Gentoo pc would be best... But if someone knows a way to 'repair' invalid filenames under Windows, that would also be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!Last edited by mhelvens on Wed Apr 28, 2010 8:29 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## eccerr0r

I'm assuming you're using an NTFS formatted external disk.  If you're using the default in-kernel ntfs driver, it doesn't support writing to XP NTFS partitions.  You'll need to grab/build ntfs-3g which does support writing.

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## Yuu

Hi,

Is it an NTFS hard drive ? If yes, install sys-fs/ntfs3g  :Smile: 

If not : what filesystem do you use on this hard drive ? Can you post logs ?

Thank you.

However, it seems that you are using NTFS support from your kernel, which does not provide write access to NTFS partitions; because you can't write and because a lot of external hard drives are NTFS formated.

PS : sorry for my english, that's not my native language.

Edit : lol, just few seconds after eccerr0r ^^

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## mhelvens

 :Very Happy:  Yes, that was it!

It makes sense now. The 'old Gentoo laptop' I was talking about... I meant to say 'old Linux laptop'. In fact, it ran Ubuntu, which was obviously running user-space NTFS support by default.

Thanks to both of you!

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