Linux and reading Windows Drives

I downloaded and burned a Knoppix DVD, and booted from it. While playing around with it, I noticed that I could read just fine from my NTFS formatted Windows drives, I was under the impression Linux could not do this?

 

Most 'Live' Linux Distros can read NTFS partitions, what they can't do is write to an NTFS partiton.

 

Oh, ok. So normal Linux distros that you boot from on a harddrive can't read from NTFS?

 

No usually they can also read ntfs, just not write.

 

Some can, some can't. Most notably is RedHat/Fedora Core and their derivatives. However NTFS support can be added.

 

Ya, the only distro I've used is Fedora Core 4. I'm downloading Debian right now though, gonna play with it.

 

Actually, Linux _can_ write to ntfs, although it's still experimental and really not something you should be doing (btw that's disabled by default on most linux distros).

 

It's not disabled, it not included. NTFS support is a add on module and the current production module supports Read-Only. The experimental developmental module supports full Read-Write access to NTFS partitions and is not included on any production Linux distributions.