An implementation of the NTFS filesystem in a Rust crate
1–10 of 54 posts
Re: An implementation of the NTFS filesystem in a Rust crate
#2Before you get too excited it is read only.
Re: An implementation of the NTFS filesystem in a Rust crate
#3This is pretty great. I've been wanting to make a simple utility that can scan an NTFS drive for a filename pattern; scanning the MFT is incredibly fast versus using the actual filesystem API calls to do so.
Re: An implementation of the NTFS filesystem in a Rust crate
#4Looks like it's read-only at the moment, but still pretty cool.
It's dual-licensed as MIT or Apache 2.0, so it ought to be usable just about anywhere.
Re: An implementation of the NTFS filesystem in a Rust crate
#5Looks like it's read-only at the moment, but still pretty cool. It's dual-licensed as MIT or Apache 2.0, so it ought to be usable just about anywhere.
> Looks like it's read-only at the moment, but still pretty cool.
That's how Linux NTFS support started out, too.
What is it about NTFS that makes writing hugely more difficult than reading?
Re: An implementation of the NTFS filesystem in a Rust crate
#6Looks like it's read-only at the moment, but still pretty cool. It's dual-licensed as MIT or Apache 2.0, so it ought to be usable just about anywhere.
> Looks like it's read-only at the moment, but still pretty cool. That's how Linux NTFS support started out, too. What is it about NTFS that makes writing hugely more difficult than reading?
It’s probably mostly done out of carefulness. I’d do the same if I were to write my own implementation of a file system.
Bugs and mistakes in the code are already not great when implementing the read part. But if you mess up the writing well now you’re gonna cause corruption of existing data. No one likes that :)
Better to stick to just reading for a long while, and weed out most of the bugs and getting an even deeper understanding of the filesystem, before starting the implementation of anything that will modify the data.
Re: An implementation of the NTFS filesystem in a Rust crate
#7Before you get too excited it is read only.
Probably prudent - would not trust any implementation except native ones in Windows that does writes.
Re: An implementation of the NTFS filesystem in a Rust crate
#8Looks like it's read-only at the moment, but still pretty cool. It's dual-licensed as MIT or Apache 2.0, so it ought to be usable just about anywhere.
> Looks like it's read-only at the moment, but still pretty cool. That's how Linux NTFS support started out, too. What is it about NTFS that makes writing hugely more difficult than reading?
I would expect writing to be much harder on all file-systems. There's only one way to read the data, but there could be any number of strategies for deciding where to write new data.
Re: An implementation of the NTFS filesystem in a Rust crate
#9Re: An implementation of the NTFS filesystem in a Rust crate
#10Question for the experts!
Has NTFS changed much in... 20 years?
Linux filesystems seem to be evolving all the time (try to install any new distro today and check out how many filesystems you can pick from the dropdown...)
Apple replaced one filesystem with another in just the past few years, with apparently some very advanced new features.
But NTFS is just... NTFS? Does NTFS today look anything like how it looked in 1994? Or 2018? Does it change radically between versions of Windows? Or does the MS creed of compatibility at all costs mean it's basically a filesystem unchanged from the 90s? Thanks!