dual boot system

[stasJohn]

I'm sure this is been asked, but I wasn't sure how to search for it.

I'm in the process of creating a dual-boot system with ubuntu and winxp. Thats fine and dandy, but I'm wondering about my second drive. I have a second drive (160gb) which I use for file storage and backup. It's currently formatted as ntfs, which I know I need to convert to fat32.

My question is, will windows and linux be able to use the files (including saving/writing/etc) on that second drive without problems? without causing corruption of the drive or any problems like that.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Kozusnik]

Yes. As fat32, I'm sure it will work. I've done it. Most distros have a package to read and write to ntfs also. Since I no longer use M$, I can't say if the ntfs works.

Mark

 

[stasJohn]

Thanks for the response.

Yes. As fat32, I'm sure it will work.

Anyone have bad experiences?

Most distros have a package to read and write to ntfs also.

I did some quick research, but it seemed like the support was basic and not 100% reliable.

 

[jshurst]

I dual boot Kubuntu and XP and I can read from my windows partition (NTFS), but not write. I think I've set it for read only in fstab, but I'm pretty new and was just following some directions off of a site. I'll try to play around with this to see if I can write to this too.

 

[who235]

Writing to an NTFS partition is still a little sketchy.

The Captive NTFS driver, and the NTFS for Linux drivers work, but there is the potential to screw up your Windoze data - at least that seems to be the conventional wisdom.

 

[jstreich]

Here's the skinny:
- Linux can read NTFS, no problem.
- Linux can write NTFS, most of the time no problem
- WindowsXP likes NTFS...

- Linux can read and write FAT(12/16/32)
- Windows can read and write FAT(12/16/32)

NTFS supports user permissions in windows (very good thing -- if you don't always use the administrator accounts or run as a user with administrator privledges) FAT doesn't.

Captive NTFS is experimental. It CAN make mistakes in writing that would cost you all your data, but I know people who have been using it for a while and never had a problem. I don't think I'd trust it yet, but I'm a paranoid Debian user who does file backups on a regular basis (or tried to).

My suggestion, if you want to share data one way, use NTFS. Any changes that you need in windows can be written to a CD/DVD/floppy/Flash drive; or fips/partion magic the secondary drive and create a FAT32 partion to use as a share.

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