Hello, I have been considering switching over to Linux from Windows, but I was wondering if its worth it as I use NTFS drives for data storage and I need them to stay like that. I was hoping to install Linux and emulate Windows in VirtualBox and use my hard drives with it or is it better to just stick with Windows but due to the privacy I'm scared of Microsoft now.
Linux can use NTFS drives. I don't think that you'd want your Linux OS on an NTFS drive, however. But everything else, sure.
Are you talking about raw access - using physical partition inside VirtualBox? I would advise against it - it's too easy to clobber the disk. As for storage, you can use NTFS, sure. Mrk
Yes, but watch out for permissions. Eg. backing up files on an ext4 partition to say an external drive formatted as NTFS will not preserve the file/folder permissions, even if you instruct (g)rsync to preserve them.
