Using the exFAT and NTFS file systems on Linux
By Armando Caussade, http://armandocaussade.org/
Version 1.1.  August 3, 2019.

Copyright © 2019 Armando Caussade.  Some rights reserved.
Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND 4.0.

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INTRODUCTION

The exFAT and NTFS file systems from Microsoft can be used on Linux, although with some caveats.  Most Linux distributions include the packages needed to read and write under these two file systems, but sometimes they will need to be manually downloaded and installed.  Be aware that dedicated operations such as label, format, checkdisc and defragmentation are not available for NTFS file system and can be limited with exFAT, at least without proprietary drivers.

USING EXFAT ON LINUX

1. Optimized for flash drives and SD memory cards, exFAT is similar to FAT32 but without the 4 GB file size limit.

2. exFAT drives will be mounted automatically on a Linux system as long as a suitable driver is present.  Otherwise an error message will be displayed.

3. exFAT on Linux requires the following packages: exfat-fuse, exfat-utils

   exfat-fuse: Contains the read and write exFAT driver for FUSE
   exfat-utils: Contains utilities to create, check, label and dump the exFAT filesystem.

   The exfat-utils package features the following utilities: 
   - dumpexfat to dump properties of the filesystem
   - exfatfsck / fsck.exfat to report errors found on a exFAT filesystem
   - exfatlabel to label a exFAT filesystem
   - mkexfatfs / mkfs.exfat to create a exFAT filesystem.

4. To install the necessary packages on Debian-based distributions, open a terminal and type the following command:

   $ sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

5. To manually mount an exFAT drive, type the commands below; this assumes the drive is located at /dev/sdb1 which stands for the first partition on the second physical device.

   $ sudo mkdir /media/exfat-drive
   $ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/exfat-drive

6. To manually unmount, type the following (again, with the aforementioned assumptions):

   $ sudo umount /dev/sdb1

USING NTFS ON LINUX

1. Commonly used with hard drives under the Windows Operating System, NTFS is ideal for large storage units. 

2. NTFS drives will be mounted automatically on a Linux system as long as a suitable driver is present.  Otherwise an error message will be displayed.

3. NTFS on Linux requires the following packages, which are nowadays included with most distributions: ntfs-3g, fuse

   ntfs-3g:  Linux NTFS userspace driver which allows read and write access
   fuse: NTFS partitions are mounted by NTFS-3G using the Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) interface

4. To install the necessary packages on Debian-based distributions, open a terminal and type the following command:

   $ sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g, fuse

5. To manually mount an NTFS drive, type the commands below; this assumes the drive is located at /dev/sdb1 which stands for the first partition on the second physical device.

   $ sudo mkdir /media/ntfs-drive
   $ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/ntfs-drive

6. To manually unmount, type the following (again, with the aforementioned assumptions):

   $ sudo umount /dev/sdb1

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