Martin is leading the development of an NT File System for the UNIX-like Linux operating system, which is freely available from lots of places. Essentially, this patch allows you to build a boot floppy that allows access to files on a supposedly secure Windows NT Server.

Microsoft acknowledges, in a footnote to article Q100108 in the Knowledge Base, that it is possible to "boot under MS-DOS, or another operating system, and use a low-level disk editing utility to view data stored on an NTFS volume," but there is of course no reason that the tool needs to be "low-level."

NTFS for Linux is distributed as a gzipped tar file (only 34K) under the terms of the GNU Public License. You may want to browse the ReadMes or read some technical information about NTFS first.

At this early stage in its development, NTFS for Linux allows read-only access. In the spirit of the GNU and Linux projects, please download the code and help Martin make it read/write and more stable. Microsoft, as might be expected, is not eager to help reverse-engineer NTFS.

Please see Martin's NTFS project page for the latest news, and to offer to help.