Newbie question re: USB drive access.

[J741]

O.K. I'm a Windows user trying to use linux.

Here's what I have: The BackTrack 1.0 Live Linux CD.

Here's what I want to do: Copy one file from a USB hard drive (NTFS file system) to a USB memory stick (FAT file system).

The problem is I have no idea how to acess the drives.

I'm a GUI person. I don't like using a command line (but I can if need be).

I see that there is a 'Konqueror file manager', but it is a LOT different from what I'm use to in Windows.

So how do I see drives like I would in Windows (C:, D:, E:, F:, etc.) and copy files to and from them?

- James.


My memory is not as good as it should be, and neither is my memory.

I have forgotten more than I can remember

 

[pansophic]

Windows and Linux filesystems are completely different, as is their approach to disk naming. You'll have to get past the idea that a separate partition or physical disk will display differently in Linux.

All disks and partitions appear to be a single file system in Linux. You can find out where specific disks or partitions are mounted using the "mount" command. You'll get a response something like below:

/dev/sda5 on / type reiserfs (rw,notail)
/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw)
/dev/sda8 on /home type reiserfs (rw)
/dev/sda7 on /tmp type reiserfs (rw)
/dev/sda2 on /windows type ntfs (rw,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46)

if you look at the last line you see that /dev/sda2 (the second partition on my primary scsi drive) is mounted at /windows and is type ntfs. It is my Windows boot partition. Other partitions are /, /home and /tmp. All partitions are on a single physical disk (/dev/sda).

If you are using a Live CD, they will frequently display an icon on the desktop for each of the partitions that they identify during boot, and I believe that KNOPPIX will now use the hotplug script to dynamically create an icon on the desktop when a new USB disk is detected. If you have these icons, then you would simply click the icon associated with each USB drive (the icon is typically a thumb drive) and they will probably be mounted read-only. On the icon that displays as the FAT thumbdrive, you would want to right-click the icon and choose Action, then Change Read/Write Mode (I believe, this is all from memory).

Then you can use the konqueror file manager windows that are open, and simply move files from the NTFS disk to the FAT disk, just like My Computer or File Mangler.

On most Live CDs that I have used, your mount point for USB drives will be /mnt/sdX1 where X is 'a'' or 'b' or 'c' or 'd.' If you try the copy using the konqueror file manager approach, I suggest you try it from the command line once you are more familiar with Linux. I think that you will find a marked increase in performance when you aren't required to update an animated icon and GUI. That is one of the reasons that many of us switched. The option to choose whether or not to wait whenever we want.


pansophic