Full NTFS Read or Write Support for Android [How To]

NTFS stands for New Technology File System, for those who don’t know. It is a proprietary file system developed for use with Microsoft’s Windows line of Operating Systems by Microsoft itself to replace the FAT (File Allocation Table) file system.

NTFS is generally accepted to be better than FAT for several reasons. A file system basically allows you to store and organize computer files and the data they contain. This makes it easier to access and find these files. NTFS has many advantages over FAT; not only does it support large data drives but it also comes with improved performance, reliability and easier management of single disk partitions.

Currently, only a very few Android devices have full support. This is due to it not being enabled by default in most of the kernels. Thanks to an XDA Developer’s member, you can now have full read/write support for NTFS due to USB-OTG support in high end devices.

Due to USB-OTG’s increasing prevalence, it will become necessary to mount NTFS drives at some point. The XD Developer member has made this something you can do right now by compiling a NTFS-3G driver for Android! This should work on any ARM device that has a fuse.ko module.

This latest stable version of NTFS-3G has been tested on Linux computers as well. Kernel source is available for most devices so it can be insmod-ed into stock kernels too. This will give the required Fuse report.

If you want to try out complete NTFS read/write support for Android, you can follow the guide below.

You may need NTFS to support NTFS partitions in your microSD card or NTFS formatted partitions of USB-OTG mounted drives.

Pre-requisites:

• Fuse driver fuse.ko, compiled for the ROM kernel sources
• Latest NTFS-3G Binary (Download source given at the bottom of this page)
• Arm powered rooted Android device. This may be SONY, Samsung, HTC or Motorola etcetera.

Instructions:

1. Push fuse.ko to /system or /data, chmod 644, and insmod
2. Push ntfs-3g to /system/xbin/, chmod 755
3. Mount USB OTG device (See script below)
For sdcard, only minor changes required!
4. Unmount as usual with “busybox umount /path/to/mount/”

Downloads:

Check this thread for the download links and also for more technical details.

[Via]