# confirm my suspicion FreeBSD

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confirm-my-suspicion-freebsd/459682>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 11, 2008, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confirm-my-suspicion-freebsd/459682 "2008-08-11T23:52:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![VineTendon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e47c2d/32.png) [@VineTendon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VineTendon)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2008, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confirm-my-suspicion-freebsd/459682/1 "2008-08-11T23:52:59Z")

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I run FreeBSD as my alternate operating system. I’ve been trying to copy files from /home/vinetendon to /usb/etc but I keep getting the message “File not found” or something along those lines.

/usb is properly mounted, fstab says it’s okay to read/write

Thing is that /usb is my external USB hd formatted in NTFS

Is the disk’s formatting causing issues? I can handily move and copy files on my UFS partitions but when it comes to the NTFS formatted external drive then BSD gets cranky.

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**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\
**Post date:** [August 12, 2008, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confirm-my-suspicion-freebsd/459682/2 "2008-08-12T02:03:51Z")

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NTFS is probably the problem. Writing to NTFS under unix is iffy. Try [this](http://www.ntfs-3g.org/). I’ve never used it but someone posted it in a NTFS/Linux thread a while back.

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**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [August 12, 2008, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confirm-my-suspicion-freebsd/459682/3 "2008-08-12T04:47:23Z")

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Works on MacOS (which is Unixoid itself, of course).

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [August 12, 2008, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confirm-my-suspicion-freebsd/459682/4 "2008-08-12T21:58:53Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> Works on MacOS (which is Unixoid itself, of course).

FreeBSDoid, in fact.

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**Author:** ![Cleophus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a88e57/32.png) [@Cleophus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cleophus)\
**Post date:** [August 12, 2008, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confirm-my-suspicion-freebsd/459682/5 "2008-08-12T22:47:57Z")

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[QUOTE=AHunter3]  
Works on MacOS (which is Unixoid itself, of course).  
[/QUOTE]

OS X cannot natively write to NTFS. The included driver is read-only. For reading and writing NTFS on Unix systems, [ntfs-3g](http://www.ntfs-3g.org/) is the way to go.

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**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confirm-my-suspicion-freebsd/459682/6 "2008-08-13T01:15:47Z")

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That’s what I said, isn’t it?

[NTFS-3g …] works on MacOS

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**Author:** ![Dragwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dragwyr/32/2855_2.png) [@Dragwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragwyr)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/confirm-my-suspicion-freebsd/459682/7 "2008-08-13T02:08:47Z")

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I have had success with Linux Mint. It read and wrote to my NTFS hard drive just fine.