Running Steam Game on Linux Mint, on external NTFS partition?

IreMinMon · January 7, 2016

So, as most of us, I too have a system with both HDD and SSD, particularly 256GB crucial SSD (sdb) and 3TB WD Black HDD (sda).

I'm running dual boot on my machine, there's both Linux and Windows installed on the SSD (sdb) and I dedicated mere 50GB for my Linux EXT4 partition. That means there isn't too much space to run all my Linux stuff off of the SSD and that I must find a way to install my Linux Steam Games on my HDD.

I tried to do this the simple way. Go to Steam settings, move the library to the HDD. Error would come up: "New Steam library must be on a filesystem mounted with execute permissions". Now I think I know what the problem is. The HDD (sda) partition is formatted with NTFS filesystem, which is a Windows proprietary thingy. Linux won't give execute permissions to software written in NTFS, which means I can't run any binary/program/app off of that partition while in Linux.

Am I correct so far?

Solution 1: I know it should be possible to convert NTFS into FAT32. Will this work? Will Linux allow execute permissions if I convert the entire partition (sda) into FAT32? The thing is though, I have windows applications installed on this partition already, will those applications keep working in case I convert my entire partition into FAT32?
Solution 2: It's one giant f**king drive, just defragment it, make another 250GB blank paritition, format is as EXT4 and put your Steam library there. The real question is, is that what you would do? Is this what we want to do? Is there really no other way than to break my drive into more partitions?

EDIT: Solution 3: Is it maybe possible to give execute permissions to files written on NTFS filesystem?

Thank you for your advices in advance. I hope I get to learn something new in this discussion, as well as any of you guys reading this.

Apevias · January 7, 2016

Linux doesn't mount NTFS partition with exec privilege by default because it consider it as unsafe. Try to mount the drive with" -o rw,exec " option or use other tools (as ntfs-3g) to mount it.

IreMinMon · January 7, 2016

Linux doesn't mount NTFS partition with exec privilege by default because it consider it as unsafe. Try to mount the drive with" -o rw,exec " option or use other tools (as ntfs-3g) to mount it.

Thank you so much! Can't try it out just now since I don't have the access to the computer, but I'll try!