Mounting a Windows folder with writing permissions in Ubuntu

Solution 1:

The above linked super user question is for mounting partition and sub directory in read only mode. You need only the sub-directory (personal folder) to be read-write.

First check your system can mount ntfs partition in read-write mode

mount -t ntfs-3g  -o rw /dev/sda1 /media/windows

Now test if the mounted fs is writable. If not stop here and ask another question in this site.

The problem is an RO mounted partition's sub-directory can't be in RW. So the solution is mount the windows partition in RW in a hidden and inaccessible place. So let's mount it on /root/win which is inaccessible by non-root users (without sudo)

As a root user do following
Steps
1. Mount windows partition in RW

mount -t ntfs-3g -o rw /dev/sda1 /root/win  

2. Bind it

mount --bind /root/win/Users/MyUser/  /home/myuser/Windows  

3. Bind a read only instance of windows partition

mount --bind /root/win /media/windows  
mount -o remount,ro /media/windows

Now everything should be OK. Additionally you can unmount the windows partition but I warn you in some system it will make make the binded one (@home) inaccessible. The code is umount /root/win

Alternatively you can mount the windows partition in RW at /media/windows ( instead of /root/win) and immediately bind mount it at the same mount point (/media/windows) so that no one (even root) can write on the partition (but on the user folder).

Solution 2:

I doubt that the linked superuser answer is a working one. (Though I can't try it.) From man mount:

Note that the filesystem mount options will remain the same as those on the original mount point, and cannot be changed by passing the -o option along with --bind/--rbind. The mount options can be changed by a separate remount command, for example:

mount --bind olddir newdir
mount -o remount,ro newdir

I also doubt that it is possible to --rbind a part of a file system with a different file system driver (ntfs vs ntfs-3g).

When you rbind the mount command ignores every option, so nothing will become read-write. And because the kernel ntfs driver does not support writes, obviously the rw option won't help with that one either. Use the ntfs-3g driver.

Basically what you should do is this (in a terminal):

mount -t ntfs-3g -o ro /dev/sda1 /media/windows
mount --bind /media/windows/Users/MyUser/    /home/myuser/Windows
mount -o remount,rw /home/myuser/Windows

(I think that --rbind is also unnecessary, --bind should be enough.)

And regarding the comment under the question: Of course you don't have to restart the system for testing, just use the mount command as I did above. (And unmount with the umount command.)

After you confirmed that this works as intended, you just modify the mount and add the options you want: uid, gid,umask, etc.

Solution 3:

See if this helps...

If sda1 is already mounted to /media/windows, you could unmount it with:

sudo umount /media/windows

Next create the directory windows in /media/:

sudo mkdir /media/windows

Edit the /etc/fstab as below:

/dev/sda1  /media/windows ntfs-3g  rw,nodev,noexec,auto,nouser,async,locale=en_US.utf8,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=0002 0 0

/media/windows/Users/MyUser/  /home/myuser/Windows  ntfs-3g rbind,user,rw,nodev,noexec,auto,async,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=0002 0 0

/media/windows/Users/OtherUser/  /home/otheruser/Windows  rbind,user,rw,nodev,noexec,auto,async,uid=1001,gid=1001,umask=0002 0 0

(Note: change uid and gid values as for the user. To get the uid and gid of a user you can use the command id -u username and id -g username resp.)

Now you can mount these with the command:

sudo mount -a

Now go to the rebinded directories and see if you can edit the file. And you should be done.

Solution 4:

Do all your testing before editing your fstab configuration file.

Well, you probably know that ntfs filesystem is automatically mounted in read-only if filessystem is flagged as dirty. What you have to do first before trying any of the answers is to mount disk in windows and run chkdsk before trying to mount it again.

Also, if mounting in rw still failing, you should try mounting with different mount type options such as sudo mount -t ntfs or sudo mount -t ntfs-3g

Once fs is mounted in rw you can do the following :

mount --bind /media/MOUNTPOINT/TARGETFOLDER /home/SHAREDDIRECTORY/ mount -o remount,ro /home/SHAREDDIRECTORY/

or

sudo gksu nautilus or sudo gksu dolphin to open an explorer with su rights