Writing to Windows XP, NTFS-FUSE or Captive-FUSE, which is best?

Posted by DebianIsCool on Tue 7 Mar 2006 at 09:48

I thought I would run a few tests to check the differences between the two ways of writing to NTFS partitions: Captive-FUSE and NTFS-FUSE.

The first test was to copy the 700 MB file SUSE-10.0-CD-i386-GM-CD3.iso

The test machine is rather old (a 750 MHz Duron chip with 512 MB RAM). For comparison purposes, it took 11:36 minutes to copy the file from a USB memory stick (VFAT) to a Reiser partition.

Results for NTFS-FUSE.

# date; cp /SUSE-10.0-CD-i386-GM-CD3.iso /c; date
Sun Mar  5 01:37:18 UTC 2006
Sun Mar  5 01:53:42 UTC 2006
NTFS-FUSE took 16:24 minutes to copy the 700 MB file from a Reiser partition to an NTFS partition.
# date; cp /c/SUSE-10.0-CD-i386-GM-CD3.iso /c/SUSE-Copy.iso; date
Sun Mar  5 01:54:59 UTC 2006
Sun Mar  5 01:58:59 UTC 2006
NTFS-FUSE took 4 minutes to copy the 700 MB file within the same NTFS partition.
# date; cp /c/SUSE-10.0-CD-i386-GM-CD3.iso /d; date
Sun Mar  5 02:17:23 UTC 2006
Sun Mar  5 02:23:11 UTC 2006
NTFS-FUSE took 5:48 minutes to copy the 700 MB file from one NTFS partition to another NTFS partition.
# date; cp /c/SUSE-10.0-CD-i386-GM-CD3.iso /; date
Sun Mar  5 04:25:23 UTC 2006
Sun Mar  5 04:27:59 UTC 2006
NTFS-FUSE took 2:36 minutes to copy the 700 MB file from an NTFS partition to a Reiser partition.

Results for Captive-FUSE.

# date; cp /SUSE-10.0-CD-i386-GM-CD3.iso /C; date
Sun Mar  5 04:44:28 UTC 2006
Sun Mar  5 06:53:34 UTC 2006
Captive-FUSE took 132:06 minutes to copy the 700 MB file from a Reiser partition to an NTFS partition.
# date; cp /C/SUSE-10.0-CD-i386-GM-CD3.iso /C/SUSE-Copy.iso; date
Mon Mar  6 00:04:03 UTC 2006
cp: reading `/C/SUSE-10.0-CD-i386-GM-CD3.iso': Invalid argument
Mon Mar  6 01:36:41 UTC 2006
FAILED: Captive-FUSE was never able to copy the 700 MB file within the same NTFS partition (3 tries, same error).
# date; cp /C/SUSE-10.0-CD-i386-GM-CD3.iso /D; date
Sun Mar  5 22:23:41 UTC 2006
Mon Mar  6 00:01:15 UTC 2006
Captive-FUSE took 97:34 minutes to miss-copy the 700 MB file from one NTFS partition to another NTFS partition. (FAILED: Wrong MD5.)
# date; cp /C/SUSE-10.0-CD-i386-GM-CD3.iso /; date
Sun Mar  5 22:15:06 UTC 2006
Sun Mar  5 22:22:17 UTC 2006
Captive-FUSE took 7:11 minutes to copy the 700 MB file from an NTFS partition to a Reiser partition.

Conclusion: NTFS-FUSE easily wins the first round.

Writing to Windows XP/2000/NT (NTFS formatted) from SuSE Linux using NTFS-FUSE.

Writing to Windows XP/2000/NT (NTFS formatted) from SuSE Linux using Captive-FUSE (Updated).

This article can be found online at the Debian Administration website at the following bookmarkable URL (along with associated comments):

http://www.debian-administration.org/article/Writing_to_Windows_XP_NTFS-FUSE_or_Captive-FUSE_which_is_best