NTFS is most powerful and high performance file system used by Microsoft in the most of the operation systems including WinXP, WinNT, Win200, Win2003 and Windows Vista. NTFS extremely powerful and supports file-level security, compression, large volume drives and RAID storage solution. It also has ability to protect your sensitive data by encrypting files and folders in a single click. No other user can view your files without your permission.

The OS running using FAT file system can not recognize NTFS file system. The simply means we can not read NTFS partition from the DOS, Win3.1, Win98, WinMe. All these operating system support FAT file system and does not have ability to read NTFS file system. There are some cases in which we need to access NTFS from the above discussed environment. The situation may be arise due to operating system crash. You have sensitive data in the system, and you can not get back your system without formating the system.

After digging a lot into this issue, finally i got a free ware utility called “NTFS Reader for DOS” that enable you to read NTFS from DOS environment and allow copying files to DOS partition or network drives.

ntfsreader.jpg

The utility interface is simple and easy to use. It can run from DOS bootable floppy or CD. The more features are:

  • Display complete physical and logical drive information.
  • Support IDE / ATA / SCSI drives.
  • Support large (more than 8GB) hard drives.
  • Support NTFS, NTFS5 file systems for reading.
  • Support FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 file systems for data writing.
  • Support compressed and fragmented files on NTFS.
  • support partitions created in MS-DOS, Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP.
  • Display non-English and long file names.
  • Preview file(s)/folder(s) before copying.
  • Support search by file name or mask.
  • Display content of the file in Hex/Text mode by Disk Viewer.

Download:

Executable file to run from bootable floppy disk.
Mirrer1: https://www.bala-krishna.com/download/readntfs.zip
Mirrer2: http://www.ntfs.com/downloads/readntfs.zip

Bootable CD ISO Image with tiny application(No installation required) to burn bootable CD.
Mirrer1: https://www.bala-krishna.com/download/boot-cd-iso.zip
Mirrer2: http://www.ntfs.com/downloads/boot-cd-iso.zip

Written by Bala Krishna

Bala Krishna is web developer and occasional blogger from Bhopal, MP, India. He like to share idea, issue he face while working with the code.